Myanmar’s military junta is ramping up its air attacks on resistance-held areas of the country, in a desperate attempt to respond to the significant gains that have been made by armed groups opposed to military rule.
According to a report published yesterday by Myanmar Now, 27 civilians were killed in a series of junta bombing raids in Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan States on Saturday and Sunday.
At least 15 were killed and 10 more were injured in Kachin State’s Tanai Township at around 11 a.m. on Saturday, when the Myanmar Air Force bombed a gold mining site located in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
“All those killed were civilians including gold miners and local shopkeepers,” KIA spokesperson Col. Naw Bu told the AFP News Agency.
Separately, the Arakan Army (AA) reported that the junta had dropped 15 bombs during three attacks Saturday on a public market in the town of Kyauktaw in Rakhine State, in western Myanmar. According to one local media report, “most of the casualties were vendors, shoppers, and pedestrians, and that the bomb explosions had also destroyed several houses and stalls in the market.”
Citing local anti-junta forces, Myanmar Now reported that the military regime has also escalated its shelling, drone strikes, and air raids in rural areas of southern Shan State’s Pekon and Hsihseng townships.
Both the KIA and AA have made significant gains against junta forces over the past year. The KIA captured Tanai Township, which is home to a cluster of artisanal gold mines, last May, according to The Irrawaddy. More significantly, the KIA also later claimed the capture of the towns of Panwa and Chipwe close to the Chinese border, both of which are major suppliers of rare earth oxides to China. Last week, the group announced that it had captured military camps located on the approaches to Bhamo, a major town on the Irrawaddy River not far from Kachin’s border with Shan State.
The AA has made similarly rapid gains in Rakhine State. Since an informal ceasefire broke down in late 2023, it has established its control over 14 of Rakhine State’s 17 township centers, as well as one township in neighboring Chin State, and is well on the way to becoming the first ethnic armed group to wrest an entire state from the control of the Myanmar military. Crowning a year of AA victories was last month’s capture of the military’s Western Regional Command headquarters in Ann Township, just the second regional military command to fall to rebels in the military’s history. (The first, the Northeast Regional Military Command in Lashio, Shan State, also fell to resistance forces last year.)
Kyauktaw Township, where Saturday’s attack took place, is located around 80 kilometers north of Sittwe, the Rakhine State capital. It has been under the AA’s control since February of last year.
These various attacks came just days after junta airstrikes in Rakhine State’s Ramree Township killed more than 40 civilians and injured 20 more. In a statement on Friday, the United Nations stated that in the attack on Kyauk Ni Maw village on Wednesday afternoon, “around 500 homes were allegedly destroyed, with children, women, and elderly people among the casualties.” Other sources put the death toll at around 41. Ramree Township, which consists of three islands in the Andaman Sea, is one of the three townships in Rakhine State that remain under the effective control of the military junta.
The past week’s attacks are consistent with a recent trend. As it has lost ground to resistance forces, and its manpower reserves have been stretched ever thinner, the military has come to rely more heavily on its significant advantage in firepower – particularly on artillery and airstrikes. In June, Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, reported that military airstrikes against civilian targets had increased five-fold in the first half of 2024.
Last year ended up seeing more air strikes than the previous three years combined, a cold statistic that does not adequately depict the devastating human impacts of the junta’s bombs. This terror rained down in 12 of Myanmar’s 14 regions and states during the course of the year, except for the Yangon and Ayeyarwady regions, where it remains largely in control.