Karen village tract bombed, 14 children among the 30 dead
Residents in Yei Twin Gone, a village tract in Bago Region, were targeted in one of the latest attacks by Myanmar’s military junta after soldiers arrested about 160 locals to extract information on local resistance leaders. Fresh massacres were also reported in Rakhine and the Mandalay Region, with six more children killed.
Yangon (AsiaNews) – At least 30 civilians, including 14 children, were killed by regular Myanmar army troops in Yei Twin Gone, a village tract[*] in Nyaunglebin Township, Bago Region.
The youngest victim was eight years old, the Karen National Union (KNU), one of the main ethnic organisations opposing the military junta that seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021, reported yesterday.
In an official statement, the KNU explained that about 300 soldiers arrived in the area on 5 March, and rounded up approximately 160 residents and brought them to the village school to question them about local resistance leaders.
Five civilians between the ages of 35 and 53 were summarily executed immediately, local sources reported, while another 25 died in aerial attacks carried out by the military junta in the following days, when armed resistance groups intervened in an attempt to free the prisoners.
Like other ethnic organisations in Myanmar, the KNU also has an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).
The Karen Peace Support Network (KPSN), which brings together various organisations providing humanitarian aid on the border with Thailand, also reported the incident, noting that five men were shot dead on the same day the troops entered the village, also known as Htee Pu Lu in the Karen language.
“When regime [forces] entered Htee Pu Lu, the villagers ran away, so they shot some of them,” a KPSN official said, citing a villager who managed to escape.
Others told the opposition newspaper The Irrawaddy that approximately 109 people escaped.
In response to the KNLA's armed attack, the Myanmar military struck the area from the air. About 14 children and nine women were among the 25 victims.
According to images released by the KNU and KPSN, those arrested were forced to dig graves for villagers killed by the junta.
The KPSN called the incident a "crime against humanity”. U Tin Oo, spokesman for the junta-appointed Bago regional administration, did not respond to requests for comment from The Irrawaddy, a newspaper close to the resistance and Myanmar’s diaspora and exiles.
The KNU warns that the death toll could rise further. Like other organisations representing Myanmar’s many ethnic groups, the group accused the military regime of holding a sham election in December and January, to give the impression of being in control of the country.
The bombings in Yei Twin Gone are just the latest atrocity committed by the military, which last Sunday also targeted a funeral in Kanphyu, a village in Kyaukpadaung, in the central Mandalay Region, theatre of fierce fighting.
Villagers were getting ready to cremate three elderly women, killed in a fire set by soldiers two days earlier.
On 24 February, the junta conducted more aerial strikes, this time against a market in Yoe Ngu village, Ponnagyun Township, Rakhine State, killing 20 people, including six children.
[*] A village tract is a fourth-level administrative subdivision of Myanmar's rural townships.
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