The attack came as the military has been making some advances in re-capturing central areas.
By RFA Burmese
The Myanmar military killed 19 people including 14 members of an insurgent militia in an air attack on a rebel position, the militia said, as the junta presses on with operations aimed at recovering territory it lost last year.
The attack was near an office in Sin Gut village, in central Myanmar’s Myingyan township, occupied by members of a pro-democracy People’s Defense Force, or PDF, groups of fighters that sprang up across the country after the military overthrew an elected government in early 2021.
PDFs and allied ethnic minority insurgent groups made stunning gains last year but the junta has vowed to recapture territory and defeat the PDFs while trying to coax the ethnic minority insurgent into peace talks.
A representative of the PDF in Myingyan, which is in the Mandalay region, said the Sunday air raid lasted for more than 20 minutes.
“First, they shot with a fighter jet. Then they came firing with machine guns from an Mi-35 helicopter,” said the militia member, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
RFA tried to telephone the Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson, Thein Htay, for comment on the attack but he did not answer.
A Myingyan PDF leader was among those killed, the PDF official said, adding that two children were among five civilians killed.
Bodies of the dead were so badly mutilated it was not possible to identify them before they were cremated, said a resident of the area who also declined to be identified.
Eight people were wounded in the attack, the PDF official said.
There had not been any fighting recently in the Myingyan area, which is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Mandalay city, unlike places to the north of the city, so the attack was a surprise, the resident said.
The military has made advances in recent days in its operations in the Mandalay region after anti-junta fighters last year took positions on the approaches to Myanmar’s second-biggest city.
There is no precise death toll for Myanmar’s war but U.N. experts said last month that more than 6,000 civilians had been killed.
“Thousands of lives have been cut short in indiscriminate attacks by the military, which often targets civilian homes and infrastructure. Unlawful killings by junta forces are common and are characterized by their brutality and inhumanity,” U.N. experts said in a report.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
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