Myanmar junta forces launched air strikes to drive pro-democracy insurgents out of a town hours after they captured it, insurgents said on Monday, while elsewhere about 20,000 people fled from another town after anti-junta fighters launched an offensive to capture it.
Myanmar’s military has in recent months come under unprecedented pressure from pro-democracy guerrillas and allied ethnic minority forces battling to end army rule after the ouster of an elected government in a 2021 coup.
Fighters in a People’s Defense Force, or PDF, one of numerous militias that have sprung up around the country to battle the military since the 2021 coup, captured the town of Tabayin in the Sagaing region early on Sunday but the junta responded with fierce air attacks.
“We had to retreat or be badly hit by the airstrikes. They were continuously striking by air,” Bo Kyar Gyi, the leader of Tabayin-based PDF, told Radio Free Asia.
The military tried to send reinforcements to the town, about 120 km (75 miles) north of the city of the city of Mandalay, under cover of fire from an Mi-35 attack helicopter, which was believed to have been sent from the Northwestern Regional Command headquarters in the town of Monya, he said.
RFA telephoned Nyunt Win Aung, a junta council spokesman, to ask about the situation at Tabayin and elsewhere in the Sagaing region but he declined to comment, saying he was too busy to talk.
PDF joint forces captured the town of about 14,000 people after four days of attacks on six positions where the military and junta-backed militia forces were stationed, a PDF under a shadow civilian government, the National Unity Government, said in a statement.
The last junta soldiers abandoned their positions early on Sunday and pro-democracy forces captured two pro-junta militia members along with 123 junta administration workers and their relatives. PDF members said more than 20 junta soldiers and pro-junta militia members and two PDF members were killed in the fighting.
Many houses and other buildings were destroyed in Tabayin town in the airstrikes, residents and PDF members said.
‘Everyone has fled’
The fighting had died down by Monday and junta troops were deployed in three monasteries -- Mya Thein Tan, Kone Thar Oo and Poba Yone -- because the town’s police compound was destroyed in the bombing, they said.
Tabayin is a hub with roads linking it to Monywa, Ye-U, Budalin, Ayadaw, Kani and Shwebo townships. One resident estimated that about 20,000 people, including residents of villages along the main road to Ye-U, had fled from their homes.
To the north, about 20,000 people had fled from the town of Indaw, 250 km (155 miles) north of Mandalay, after PDF fighters launched an offensive to capture it, residents said.
The insurgents launched their attack on Indaw’s police and military positions on Friday and junta forces had responded with airstrikes there too, they said.
“The military junta bombarded the town with planes and everyone has fled,” said one resident who declined to be identified.
“Most people fled towards Kachin state. No one’s left in the town,” said the resident, adding that he had no information about casualties.
Indaw is on the main road between Mandaly and Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state in the north.
The United Nations says about 3 million people have been forced from their homes by conflict in Myanmar, many since fighting increased significantly at the beginning of the year.
Editing by RFA Staff.