Category: Americas

A farmer who lost his wife, three children and his mother when a bomb was dropped on his Kachin state village earlier this week said the powerful explosion wiped out buildings up to one mile away and sounded like something “used in the world wars.” “Houses built by NGOs and the locals are now left with only iron pillars.” Maran Bauk Lar told Radio Free Asia. “This was a type of bomb that has never been used in Myanmar.” The explosion at the Mung Lai Hkyet internally displaced persons camp at about 11 p.m. on Monday killed 29 people, including 11 children, and left 57 others wounded, relief workers told RFA.  The camp is near Lai Zar in the mountainous border area between Kachin state and China. Lai Zar is the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army, or the KIA, which has fought the Burmese military for decades and controls areas of northern Myanmar.  KIA information officer Col. Naw Bu told RFA earlier this week that he believed the junta was targeting the headquarters in the attack. Maran Bauk Lar, whose wife and three children were killed in the Mung Lai Hkyet attack, found their bodies when he returned to the camp. His mother and sister-in-law also were killed. Credit: Provided to RFA Maran Bauk Lar said he was walking to his farm when he heard the explosion. When he returned, he found a deep pit and the remains of his sister-in-law and the other family members.  “My mother’s body was completely dismembered, and her skull was broken,” he said. “Only the bones remain. My wife and children were killed under the collapsed building. Our dormitories were completely destroyed. There is nothing left.” ‘Emboldened by the indifference’ The Mung Lai Hkyet camp has 658 residents, many of whom are now suffering from psychological trauma as they recover from the explosion, relief workers said.  Survivors have been temporarily relocated to a church in Woichyai, an internally displaced persons camp in Lai Zar.  “At the moment, they are sleeping on the floor of the church,” a person helping them said. “They have to start a new life from scratch. They don’t have a single penny in their hands.” Coffins are lined up next to graves as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of a military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp near the northern Myanmar town of Laiza on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, a group of independent experts working to support human rights efforts in the country, urged the United Nations and its member states to hold the junta responsible for the attack. “The Myanmar military is so emboldened by the indifference of the international community in response to its decades of atrocity crimes that it is now attacking camps for internally displaced people,” said Yanghee Lee, a member of the council and a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. “The military is flagrantly massacring the most vulnerable people in society, and yet U.N. entities in Myanmar will not even publicly name the military as the perpetrator,” he said.  At the State Department, spokesman Matthew Miller said that the United States was “deeply concerned” by reports of the explosion. “We strongly condemn the military regime’s ongoing attacks that have claimed thousands of lives since the February 2021 coup and continue to exacerbate the region’s most severe humanitarian crisis,” he said on Tuesday.  A girl cries next to a grave as a mass funeral takes place to bury victims of the military strike on Mung Lai Hkyet camp near Laiza, Myanmar, on Oct. 10, 2023. Credit: AFP ‘The culture of military dictatorship’ Fighting in the area between junta forces and the KIA has intensified since July. Lately, there have been artillery strikes from the junta almost every day, local residents said. While some residents said they heard a plane just before Monday’s explosion, others told RFA that they heard nothing.  The KIA has formed an investigation team to determine what caused the blast, Naw Bu said, adding that it may have been a bomb dropped by a junta-operated drone.  “They always target the public, not only in our territory in Kachin state, but across the country,” he said of the junta. “It is the culture of military dictatorship.” A man stands amid debris left by the military strike on the Mung Lai Hkyet camp on Oct. 11, 2023, two days after the assault. Credit: AFP RFA’s calls on Wednesday to Win Ye Tun, the junta’s social affairs minister and spokesman for Kachin state, for comments on the death toll at Mung Lai Hkyet went unanswered. Junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that junta troops were not behind the attack on Mung Lai Hkyet. He speculated that it was caused by an accidental explosion at a warehouse where the KIA stores gunpowder. A Mung Lai Hkyet resident told RFA that it was “totally untrue” that there are weapons factories and arsenals in the camp.  “There is no arsenal,” he said. “There are only civilians who are displaced persons.”  Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

Fighting between junta troops and the ethnic Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, has driven more than 1,000 people from northeast Myanmar’s Shan state across the border with China to seek shelter, according to residents. The group is the latest example of civilians displaced by conflict in Myanmar, where the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that tens of thousands have fled into neighboring countries to avoid conflict since the military’s February 2021 coup.  More than 1.6 million people have been internally displaced by fighting since the takeover, according to the U.N. Fighting between the military and the TNLA in Shan’s Muse and Kutkai townships broke out on July 23, when the latter’s forces attacked a pro-junta militia convoy near Sei Lant village on the Muse-Namhkan highway. Since then, more than 1,000 residents of seven villages – including the border tracts of Nam Kat and Sei Lant – have fled into China, said a resident of Nam Kat who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. “We have been fleeing from our homes for two months now,” said the resident. “We can’t make a living and the children’s education has also been impacted.” The resident said that few people felt the need to flee the fighting initially, even when the military began firing artillery in the area. “But one evening recently, lots of people from Namhkan fled after being attacked because the military used a jet fighter and the attack was at night,” he said. There are more than 100 internally displaced persons, or IDPs, sheltering in Namhkan’s Kawng Tat village and more than 300 IDPs sheltering in Muse’s Nam Hsant village, the resident said, while at least 1,000 people have fled to Ruili and Jie Gao in southwest China’s Yunnan province. The number of people who have fled elsewhere was not immediately clear, he added. Caught between two factions Residents of Sei Lant told RFA that while some villagers had fled to Muse, most are “living in fear” in their homes. One resident named Aik Sai said that although fighting has stopped in recent days, “they are worried that it will resume” due to the presence of troops from both sides stationed near the village. “Both sides are staying [near] the village and we can’t drive them out,” he said, urging the troops to “fight in the jungle, if possible … [because] it isn’t good for both sides to use locals as shields.” Aik Sai said life in the village had ground to a halt amid the fighting and that “we can’t earn a living.” “We’re worried about residents being shot in the village,” he added. TNLA spokesman Lt-Col. Mai Aik Kyaw confirmed the military’s recent use of air power in the area. He said that on Sept. 25 at around 10:00 p.m., the military dropped six bombs, including two 500-pound bombs with an impact radius of up to 30 meters (100 feet), in the jungle near a TNLA camp along the Muse-Namhkan highway, around 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the Chinese border. “We don’t know why they came and attacked,” he said, adding that the TNLA has “only engaged in self-defense.” “Since Sept. 22, there has been no retaliatory attack from our side,” Mai Aik Kyaw said. “On their side, they are constantly firing from the air and artillery every day. In the last three or four days, there have been drone attacks.” A Myanmar junta jet dropped 500 lb. bombs on a TNLA base on Loi Mauk Mountain, Sept. 26, 2023. Credit: News & Information Department A resident of Kutkai’s Ngawt Ngar village also confirmed the military’s use of aircraft, saying that two fighter jets fired on the tract on the afternoon of Sept. 26. That same evening, he said, junta troops in nearby Nam Hpat Kar lobbed artillery at Ngawt Ngar, damaging a home. The resident said that the incidents were enough to cause many villagers to flee and others to go into hiding nearby. “There are only a few people left [in the village],” he said. “Some ran away to the jungle, since people don’t dare to stay in the village anymore.” Control of border town Attempts by RFA to reach the junta’s economic minister and Shan state spokesman Khun Thein Maung went unanswered. Similarly, RFA contacted the Chinese Embassy in Yangon via email regarding the issue of Myanmar nationals fleeing into China due to fighting near the border, but received no response. Than Soe Naing, a Myanmar political commentator, said he believes that the junta has been stepping up attacks in the area because it “cannot tolerate” TNLA control of Muse, a town of economic importance due to its proximity to the border. “That’s why the junta is putting pressure on the TNLA, and the fighting has become intense,” he said. According to the TNLA, the two sides fought nearly 50 battles between July 23 and Sept. 26. RFA reporting found that a total of nine civilians – including a child – were killed and 13 civilians were injured in Mogoke, Muse and Kutkai townships over the same period. Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.