A column of soldiers killed two men in their 60s, one of whom was disabled, last week while assaulting villages in southern Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region, according to resistance forces.
Having advanced into Wetlet Township from Shwebo on July 8, the junta force of around 60 troops reached Thar Laing village, west of the Ayeyarwady River, where they shot Than Chaung, 65, last Thursday.
The junta column then proceeded to torch the nearby village of Thone Sint Kan. Khin Maung Htay–a paraplegic, 62-year-old resident of the village–died in the fires.
A spokesperson for the Wetlet Township People’s Defence Team said both victims had been physically unable to escape to safety.
“He couldn’t run because of his age. I think he didn’t believe the military would actually kill him. We found his body with gunshot wounds after the junta column left,” the spokesperson said, referring to Than Chaung.
“The disabled man from Thone Sint Kan died in the fire at his house. Half his body was burned,” the spokesperson added.
Although the military left Thar Laing with relatively little damage, they looted and set fires in the villages of Thone Sint Kan and Paukkan, located a few miles to the southeast, on Thursday.
“Thone Sint Kan used to have over 200 houses but only about 40 are still standing after the arson attack. They torched our village this morning as well,” a man living in Paukkan told Myanmar Now on Friday.
The junta column carried out the arson attack on Paukkan at around 6am on Friday, but because of the rain only eight houses burned, the local man said.
The junta column came under attack as it reached Htan Gyi village, a few miles southeast of Paukkan at the southern edge of Wetlet Township, where resistance forces ambushed them and there was an exchange of fire.
Thar Laing, Thone Sint Kan and Paukkan are located on the Mandalay-Shwebo segment of the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway.
The junta column that carried out the attacks included soldiers from Infantry Battalion (IB) 364, based in Mawlaik, Sagaing Region, and IB 368, based in Paungbyin. They combined to form the column at the military’s Training Centre No. 8 in Shwebo, according to resistance forces.
Military forces have carried out frequent attacks in Wetlet Township recently.
Junta airstrikes severely damaged a monastery and other buildings in villages surrounding Wetlet Township in late June. On July 6, the military fatally shot a male street vendor and six women in separate incidents in and near the village of Thamayoe in Wetlet Township.
The village of Thone Sint Kan reportedly came under attack despite the absence of active resistance forces there.
“We weren’t even able to set landmines or fire on soldiers from Thone Sint Kan, and they still didn’t spare the village. They’re just torching villages and terrorising civilians, they don’t even care about the PDF [People’s Defence Forces]. All the villages affected were the ones near the railway,” said a member of Shwebo District PDF Battalion 2.
According to resistance forces, the military council plans to allow trains to run again soon on the railway between Mandalay and Myitkyina, the administrative capital of Kachin State.
Khat Htein Nan, the junta-appointed chief minister of Kachin State, told local news outlets that they were preparing to resume railway operations in the state and had completed a trial run on June 24.
Serious fighting has also broken out in Kachin State since Friday, between Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and junta forces, but the clashes have so far been concentrated near Laiza, a town on the Chinese border some distance from the capital and the railway.
The railway was upgraded using funds borrowed from the government of South Korea during the government of the National League for Democracy (NLD). Trains running on the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway before March 2020 were halted because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A large number of railway personnel participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) in opposition to the February 2021 military coup, which caused a further delay to the resumption of normal operations. The Mandalay-Myitkyina railway has now been continuously out of use for two full years.
Myat Kyaw, the junta-appointed chief minister of Sagaing Region, said plans were in motion to reopen the segment of the railway between Sagaing and Shwebo in June, according to local resistance groups.
