This UGC photo taken and obtained from the Facebook account of Mai So Jar on September 6, 2024 shows people gathering around a destroyed building following an air strike in Namhkham township in Myanmar’s northern Shan state. Myanmar military air strikes in northern Shan state killed 11 civilians and wounded 11 more, a spokeswoman for an ethnic minority armed group battling the junta told AFP on September 6.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar military air strikes in northern Shan state killed 11 civilians and wounded 11 more, a spokeswoman for an ethnic minority armed group battling the junta told AFP on Friday (September 6, 2024).

The junta is battling widespread armed opposition to its 2021 coup and its soldiers are accused of bloody rampages and using air and artillery strikes to punish civilian communities.

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“They bombed at two areas in Namhkam” town on Friday around 1:00 am local time (1830 GMT), Lway Yay Oo of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) said.

The strikes killed 11 and wounded 11, she said, adding that the office of a local political party had been damaged.

The dead were five men, four women and two children, she said.

Namhkam is around five kilometres (three miles) from the border with China’s Yunnan province, with TNLA fighters claiming control of the town following weeks of fighting last year.

Images on social media showed people sifting through rubble and carrying a young person who appeared to be wounded.

One video showed several destroyed buildings. AFP reporters geolocated that video to a site in Namhkam and said it had not appeared online before.

One resident said she had seen 13 wounded people in the local hospital.

“I heard they will hold funerals this evening,” she told AFP, asking for anonymity for security reasons.

The TNLA had warned residents of the danger of further airstrikes and said people would be allowed to leave the town for safety, she added.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

Since last year the military has lost swaths of territory near the border with China in northern Shan state to an alliance of armed ethnic minority groups and “People’s Defence Forces” battling to overturn its coup.

The groups have seized a regional military command and taken control of lucrative border trade crossings, prompting rare public criticism by military supporters of the junta’s top leadership.

Earlier this week junta chief Min Aung Hlaing warned civilians in territory held by ethnic minority armed groups to prepare for military counterattacks, state media reported.

The junta also announced this week that it had declared the TNLA a “terrorist” organisation.

Those found supporting or contacting the TNLA and two other ethnic minority armed groups, the Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), can now face legal action.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 and launched a crackdown that sparked an armed uprising.

Conflict since the coup has forced more than 2.7 million people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.

This photo taken on July 9, 2024, shows displaced people from Lashio standing near their car trying to cross a flooded area as they flee their homes following clashes between Myanmar’s military and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, on the road from Lashio to Taunggyi in Myanmar’s northern Shan State.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar ethnic minority fighters said on July 10 they had seized a town along a key trade highway to China following days of clashes, in another blow to the military.

Northern Shan State has been rocked by fighting since late last month, when an alliance of ethnic armed groups renewed an offensive against the military along the highway to China’s Yunnan province.

The clashes have shredded a Beijing-brokered truce that in January halted an offensive by the alliance of the Arakan Army (AA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

The town of Naungcho “is totally ours”, General Tar Bhone Kyaw of the TNLA said.

Earlier on Wednesday, a military source said that ethnic minority fighters were in control of “most” of the town.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

Naungcho is around 50 km down the highway from the former British hill station of Pyin Oo Lwin, home to the military’s elite officer training academy.

Another road from the town leads to Taunggyi, the capital of Shan state.

TNLA fighters were also inside the town of Lashio, home to the junta’s northeastern command, the TNLA said.

Its forces had briefly captured a battallion command near the city but had been forced to retreat when the military launched air strikes, said Tar Bhone Kyaw.

On Tuesday the junta said 18 civilians in Lashio had been killed and 24 wounded in shelling, rocket and drone attacks by the alliance.

The military has carried out several air strikes around the town of about 150,000 people, according to residents.

Fleeing in convoys

On Tuesday, Lashio residents piled into cars weighed down with belongings and navigated potholed and monsoon-soaked dirt roads in a bid to flee the fighting, AFP images showed.

On Monday around 45 people crowded onto a boat to be taken across a river swollen by the monsoon rains.

Myanmar’s borderlands are home to myriad ethnic armed groups who have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 for autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Some have given shelter and training to newer “People’s Defence Forces” (PDFs) that have sprung up to battle the military after it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021.

In recent days, PDF fighters have battled junta forces in Madaya township, around an hour north of second city Mandalay.

Amid the renewed fighting last week, top junta general Soe Win travelled to China to discuss security cooperation along their shared border.

China is a major ally and arms supplier to the junta, but analysts say Beijing also maintains ties with Myanmar’s armed ethnic groups holding territory near its border.

A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military government in the country’s western state of Rakhine claimed on May 18, 2024, to have seized a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the latest in a series of victories for foes of the country’s military government. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Rohingya activists accused a Myanmar ethnic armed group on May 22 of displacing thousands of the persecuted minority in western Rakhine state, after the United States said it was troubled by increasing violence.

Clashes have rocked Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked junta forces in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021.

The AA says it is fighting for more autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine population in the state, which is also home to around 6,00,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Rakhine in 2017 during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.

A joint statement released by several Rohingya organisations based abroad said AA fighters forced Rohingya residents to leave the town of Buthidaung last week and then burned and looted their homes.

It said the Rohingya were then directed by the fighters into areas controlled by the AA.

The statement called for the AA to end “forced displacement and human rights violations” against the Rohingya.

The AA said it had seized Buthidaung last week, the latest victory it has claimed against the junta in Rakhine state.

It said it had warned residents of the town to leave and had subsequently been “assisting people in moving to safer areas” but did not give any details.

It accused the junta of destroying Buthidaung and of inciting “racial and religious violence” by recruiting “Bengali Muslims” to fight the AA.

Rohingya view the word “Bengali” as a slur that implies they are interlopers in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

The Rohingya groups’ statement also accused the junta of conscripting “several thousand” Rohingya to fight and of using them as “cannon fodder”.

The junta has not responded to requests for comment on the latest clashes around Buthidaung.

AFP has also contacted the AA for comment.

The latest clashes have killed hundreds and displaced at least 3,00,000 people across Rakhine since they began in November, according to the United Nations.

Internet and phone networks are all but cut across swaths of the state, making communication difficult.

‘Stoking tensions’

The U.S. State Department cited on Tuesday reports of towns being burned and residents including Rohingya people being displaced.

The U.N. human rights chief issued a similar warning at the weekend, saying that tensions were high between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya and were being stoked by Myanmar’s military junta.

“The military’s previous acts of genocide and other crimes against humanity targeting Rohingya, in addition to its history of stoking intercommunal tensions in Rakhine… underscore the grave dangers to civilians,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

“The current increased violence and intercommunal tensions also raise the risks of further atrocities occurring,” he added.

Mr. Miller called on the junta and all armed groups to protect civilians and allow unhindered humanitarian access.

The AA is one of several armed ethnic minority groups in Myanmar’s border regions, many of which have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Clashes between the AA and the military in 2019 displaced around 2,00,000 people.

A powerful armed ethnic group in Myanmar said on Sunday it had won control over a town in the western state of Rakhine after weeks of fighting, denying accusations it had targeted members of the Muslim-minority Rohingya during the offensive.

Khine Thu Kha, a spokesman for the Arakan Army (AA), said its soldiers had taken Buthidaung near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh, marking another battlefield defeat for the ruling junta that is fighting opposition groups on multiple fronts.

“We have conquered all the bases in Buthidaung and also took over the town yesterday,” Khine Thu Kha told Reuters by telephone.

Some Rohingya activists accuse the AA of targeting the community during the assault on Buthidaung and surrounding areas, forcing many of them to flee for safety.

“AA troops came into downtown, forced the people to leave their homes and started torching houses,” Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition advocacy group told Reuters, based on what he said were eyewitness accounts.

“While the town was burning, I spoke with several people I have known and trusted for years. They all testified that the arson attack was done by the AA.”

Reuters could not independently verify the conflicting accounts. A junta spokesman did not respond to a call seeking comment.

Rohingya have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades. After escaping a military-led crackdown in 2017, nearly a million of them live crammed into refugee camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.

Junta’s Biggest Challenge

Myanmar has been in turmoil since a 2021 military coup, which led to the rise of the resistance fighting alongside long-established ethnic minority rebel groups.

The conflict has escalated since October, when an alliance of ethnic armies including the AA launched a major offensive near the Chinese border, taking swathes of territory from the better-armed junta and presenting its biggest challenge since taking power.

The junta has lost control of around half its 5,280 military positions, including outposts, bases and headquarters, according to one estimate.

The AA’s Khine Thu Kha said junta aircraft and Muslim insurgent groups aligned with the military had set fire to parts of Buthidaung, which had a population of around 55,000 people, according to the most recent government census available, from 2014.

“The burning of Buthidaung is due to the air strikes from the junta’s jet fighter before our troops entered the town,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya civil society activist and a deputy minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, said Rohingya residents had been asked by the AA to leave Buthidaung but had responded that they had nowhere to go, leaving them trapped when the offensive occurred.

“Since about 10 p.m. last night up to this early morning, Buthidaung town had been burning and now only ashes remain,” he told Reuters.

Rohingya residents fled to the field and there may casualties, he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Many people have been killed in an artillery strike at a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s Kachin State, among them women, children and the elderly, local media reports and sources in the area said on Tuesday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports. The Kachin media and local sources said the incident took place close to midnight on Monday, a few kilometres from a military camp run by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is in conflict with Myanmar’s ruling military.

The KIA could not immediately be reached for confirmation. The reports were shared on social media by a local activist and a minister in Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, who did not immediately respond to request for confirmation. A spokesperson for Myanmar’s junta was not immediately reachable.

She is appealing dozens of convictions for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Supreme Court in military-ruled Myanmar has rejected appeals against six corruption convictions for the jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, according to media reports.

Suu Kyi, in detention since the military toppled her government in a 2021 coup, faces 27 years in prison. She is appealing dozens of convictions for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has denied wrongdoing.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup and the junta’s crackdown on opponents, with thousands jailed or killed. Many governments have called for the unconditional release of Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners in the Southeast Asian country.

A junta spokesperson did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment on Sunday.

The court in August rejected five appeals by Suu Kyi on illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, sedition and violating coronavirus restrictions.

The junta recently granted a partial pardon that shaved six years off her prison sentence, a move that critics, including her son, said meant nothing.

File picture of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi

Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is ailing and a request for an outside physician to see her has been denied by the country’s military rulers, a source familiar with the matter and the shadow government loyal to her said on Tuesday.

The 78-year-old Nobel laureate instead has been treated by a prisons department doctor.

“She was suffering swelling in her gums and could not eat well and is feeling light-headed along with vomiting,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to fear of arrest.

Myanmar military junta spokesperson did not comment.

The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since early 2021, when the military overthrew Ms. Suu Kyi’s elected government and cracked down on opponents of military rule, with thousands jailed or killed.

Ms. Suu Kyi is facing 27 years of detention related to 19 criminal offences. She denies all the charges for which she was convicted, ranging from incitement and election fraud to corruption, and has been appealing against them.

In July, she was moved to house arrest from prison in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Myanmar’s exiled National Unity Government, set up by opponents of military rule and the remains of Ms. Suu Kyi’s previous government, said the healthcare and security of political detainees is the responsibility of the military junta.

“The international community should pressure the junta for the healthcare and security of all the political detainees including Aung San Suu Kyi,” Kyaw Zaw, spokesperson for the National Unity Government, told Reuters.

Many governments have called for the unconditional release of Ms. Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners, and some, including the United States, European Union and Great Britain, have targeted the Southeast Asian country’s military with sanctions.