Twenty-nine people were killed and dozens wounded in a military strike on a camp for displaced people in northern Myanmar, a spokesman for an ethnic rebel group that controls the area said yesterday.
Myanmar’s junta has been accused of carrying out multiple bloody attacks on civilian targets as it struggles to quell resistance to its 2021 coup.
The latest attack happened at about 11:30pm on Monday, Colonel Naw Bu of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) said.
Photo: AFP
“We found 29 dead bodies including children and older people ... 56 people were wounded,” he said, adding they were investigating what kind of strike had hit the camp.
“We did not hear any aircraft,” he said, adding that they were looking into whether the military had used a drone to target the camp near the town of Laiza, on the Chinese border.
Local media images purporting to show the aftermath of the strike showed rescuers working by torchlight to recover bodies from wooden debris. At least 10 bodies were shown laid out on towels and tarpaulins on the ground.
Colonel Naw Bu said that 42 people were being treated at a hospital near Laiza in Kachin state.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said the military was “investigating” the reports.
He said the military believed a store of bombs belonging to the rebels in the area had caused an explosion, without giving evidence.
More than 10,000 people have been displaced in Kachin state since the military’s ousting of the government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.
The coup sparked huge protests and a bloody crackdown on dissent that has seen tens of thousands arrested and more than 4,100 killed, according to local monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
The KIA controls swathes of Kachin state — home to the world’s largest jade mines — and has clashed with the military for decades.
The region has seen heavy fighting in the wake of the 2021 putsch, with the junta accusing the KIA of arming and training the newer People’s Defense Forces that have sprung up to battle the junta.
Military airstrikes on a concert held by the KIA in October last year killed about 50 people and wounded 70.
The junta said reports that that airstrike killed civilians were “rumors.”
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights had found a “seemingly endless spiral of military violence,” it said in its latest report on Myanmar.
Through interviews and open source data it had found “a sharp rise” in serious human rights violations “including the increase ... of incidents in which 10 or more individuals were killed.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS