A junta-appointed ward administrator in Yangon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township was shot dead on Wednesday morning, according to a witness.
Hla Oo, the ward administrator for Hlaing Tharyar’s ward 13, was assassinated in front of the Yuwaddy furniture shop near the Pin Lon market on Bo Aung Kyaw Street in Hlaing Tharyar, the witness said. The assailants were two men on a motorbike, he added.
“They just showed up on a bike and shot him in the head at close range. There were two of them. He was on his way to the market,” he said.
The attack comes about a month after an explosion was reported at Hla Oo’s house, said the witness, who is a resident of Hlaing Tharyar.
“I heard a handmade bomb went off at his home about a month ago. He didn’t really take it seriously back then. He just went on with his life,” the witness said.
Hla Oo was known in the ward for helping regime forces in their crackdowns on protests and as a supporter of the junta’s brutal violence, he added.
“We were told that he was helping the military arrest or kill these youths in the ward who were active in protests. He was among the administrators that people didn’t like,” he said.
After his assassination, the military council’s armed forces blocked roads in the ward and interrogated pedestrians and people in vehicles.
The township has been under martial law since the regime carried out a brutal crackdown on anti-coup protests on March 14.
On June 1, Sai Lin Zaw, a member of the junta’s Township Administrative Council, was shot dead by a gunman on a motorcycle.
In the wake of a wave of attacks on junta-appointed administrators around the country, the regime’s home affairs minister met with local officials in Yangon on June 11 and offered financial support to the families of seven assassinated administrators.
An administrator in attendance told Myanmar Now that the minister appointed by the military council warned them to take care of themselves.
On Wednesday, Aye Tun, deputy head of the Kyauktan Township Education Office in Yangon, was also shot dead in the street.
Myanmar Now was still gathering information about the attack at the time of reporting.
