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USDP member in Mandalay shot, wounded

Known Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) member and election canvasser Kyaw Kyaw Min was shot five times in Mandalay’s Chanmyathazi Township by an unidentified gunman on Friday morning, according to area residents. 

The shooting took place outside of Kyaw Kyaw Min’s house on Myintzu St in Kanthaya Myothit Ward. The victim survived, but reportedly suffered wounds to his hip and forearm, for which he is being treated at Mandalay General Hospital. 

“Now he is out of surgery. We were told that his injuries were not critical. [The authorities] said they are pursuing the shooter. We are worried and we don’t know what to do,” his sister said.

Kyaw Kyaw Min has been accused by locals in Chanmyathazi Township of acting as a military informant reporting on anti-coup activities, as well as being a supporter of the army. Myanmar Now was unable to verify these allegations.

“It was him who informed the regime authorities about people who later got arrested,” a resident told Myanmar Now. 

Around one hour after the shooting, the junta’s troops arrived in Kyaw Kyaw Min’s neighbourhood on trucks and bulldozers, using the vehicles to block the roads and proceeding to conduct house by house searches.

Security was tightened throughout Chanmyathazi Township, with cars and motorcycles stopped and subjected to inspection by soldiers, according to the residents. 

The military council had previously announced that eight members of Mandalay’s anti-coup People’s Defence Force (MPDF) were killed and eight more arrested during a shootout with the regime’s armed forces in the township on June 22. 

MPDF has said that 10 of the junta’s troops, including an officer, were also killed in the fighting. 

The incident, which marked the first clash between the military and the local resistance in a major urban area since the February 1 coup, has been followed by greater suppression by the coup council throughout the township. Locals have said that the junta’s troops continue to threaten residents and have opened fire on neighbourhoods known to be opposed to the coup regime, including those in Mandalay’s Seinban quarter. 

Since early May, several supporters of the army, members of the military-backed USDP and local administrators seen as collaborating with the regime have been shot dead after they were accused of being informers and supporting army surveillance of anti-coup activists and demonstrators. 

On April 28, a bomb blast occurred at the compound of the USDP office in Mandalay’s Chanayethazan Township. A USDP office in Pyigyidagun Township was also targeted in an arson attack on May 3.

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