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A junta airstrike that hit several houses in a village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state killed 15 civilians, including three generations of the same family, and injured at least five others, residents said.
Rakhine state has seen some of the most intense fighting in Myanmar since the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat, as junta troops and members of the Arakan Army, or AA, vie for control of the region.
The AA has captured 10 townships in Rakhine state and one in neighboring Chin state since launching an offensive nearly a year ago. It is fighting to capture another three townships in Rakhine, where it has already seized border posts, a naval training base and an airport.
Amid battlefield losses, the junta has increasingly turned to airstrikes and heavy artillery, with catastrophic results for the state’s civilian population.
A resident of Toungup township told RFA Burmese that two fighter jets dropped bombs onto the roofs of densely-built civilian homes in Tan Hlwe Ywa Ma village at around 11 p.m. on Monday, killing eight males aged six to 70 and seven females in their 40s to 60s. Two of the women are yet to be identified.
“The bombs directly hit their houses,” said the resident who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “Some entire families were killed by the bombardment.”
The resident said that the airstrike killed a grandfather, father, and son in one family, and a husband and wife in another.
Details about those injured in the attack remained unclear amid telecommunication disruptions.
The airstrike followed one on the same village on Sept. 24, which killed two civilians and wounded five others, despite “no fighting in the area,” according to residents.
Strategic hill captured
Another resident of Toungup township told RFA that the junta likely believed that AA troops were stationed in the village.
“There are no armed clashes in Toungup township these days, despite high military tension,” he said. “The junta likely worried that the AA would attack its battalions in the area [and carried out a preemptive strike].”
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Tan Hlwe Ywa Ma is home to more than 10,000 people living in around 3,000 households. Many residents have fled the area in fear of additional aerial attacks, sources said.
While there is no armed conflict in Toungup township, where the junta’s No. 5 Military Operations Command is located, the AA has surrounded junta’s nearby No. 346 and No. 544 Light Infantry Battalions, according to sources close to the Arakan rebels.
The AA announced on Monday morning that it had captured the junta’s Me Taung military strategic hill in Ann township, which is within the military’s Western Command and to the north of Toungup, after nearly two weeks of intense fighting.
RFA tried to telephone the junta’s Rakhine state spokesperson, Hla Thein, to inquire about the airstrikes in Toungup township as well as the wider military situation in the region, but he could not be reached for comment.
Residents of Rakhine state say that the junta has been conducting more aerial attacks on civilian areas in townships which were lost to the AA, as well as areas of intense fighting.
Data compiled by RFA found that junta airstrikes killed 93 civilians and wounded 66 others in Rakhine’s Thandwe, Maungdaw, Pauktaw, Myaebon and Toungup townships in September alone.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.