Amid a series of military raids throughout Sagaing Region last week, heavy artillery fire by a junta unit in Kanbalu Township killed two civilians, while a prisoner captured by the military in Budalin was found dead on the same day.
Soldiers stationed in the Kanbalu village of Koe Taung Boet fired shells at neighbouring Zee Ka Nar on November 3 after anti-junta defence forces ambushed 50 advancing Myanmar army troops, according to a local.
The military had previously occupied Zee Ka Nar for two nights, forcing residents to flee, but the local man explained that the shelling began as villagers cautiously started to return.
“Locals were forced to stay on their farms as their villages were being torched and the defence forces were intercepting the junta during their assaults,” he told Myanmar Now. “The military then started firing shells at the village to secure passage for their own forces.”
Twelve-year-old Paing Shin Mu was killed after being hit in the head with shrapnel from the artillery, and his 68-year-old grandmother, Daw Win, later died of similar injuries to her abdomen, villagers said.
Their home was also destroyed, and Paing Shin Mu’s younger sister, Thoon Yati, age 7, was reportedly wounded in the attack.
“I don’t know what kind of artillery shell it was but we couldn’t even get close to their house, because the fire was huge. The entire house and the barn beside were completely reduced to ashes,” the local source said.
Around 150 soldiers from the nearby city of Monywa—where the Northwestern Military Command is located—arrived in southern Budalin Township on November 2, and proceeded to raid multiple villages in that area.
Wai Phyo Aung, the leader of the Kan Swei village defence team who had been scouting the area at the time of the raids, was captured by the junta forces. He was found dead on a rubber farm from a gunshot wound to the chest the next day, a defence team member said—the fourth Budalin resistance fighter to be killed since early October.
In both Kanbalu and Budalin, the military took multiple civilian hostages in the recent attacks.
The unit that struck Kan Swei went on to loot homes in the villages of Tayaw Taw and Kokkosu, nine miles to the north. There, they captured eight locals, including two five-year-old children, and held them in a local monastery while questioning them about local defence forces.
“They said they would torch one house for every gunshot that they heard. We didn’t attack them as we didn’t want the military to harm the hostages,” said an officer from the local Byattwi-Byatta resistance group, named for two Burmese mythical creatures.
Most of the villagers were released after a day, but two men in their 30s were reportedly forced to accompany the troops as they continued their advance, the resistance officer said.
More than 10 locals were also detained by the military unit in Kanbalu Township, arrested from farms where they sought refuge after their villages were targeted, according to an officer from the People’s Administration Team for the Koe Taung Boet region, which includes more than 20 communities. Some 500 homes in 13 villages in the area have been destroyed by the junta since the February 2021 coup, with residents of at least eight such sites having been displaced.
“The military arrested several locals and accused them of having contact with the revolutionary forces,” he told Myanmar Now. “It’s clear that none of the locals support the military. If they did, they’d be greeting them at the village entrance instead of fleeing.”
The military council has not released any information on its operations in Budalin and Kabalu townships.
