BANGKOK (AP): A retired high-ranking officer in Myanmar’s military was shot dead by a self-proclaimed urban guerrilla group on Thursday near his home in the country’s biggest city, marking the latest assassination attributed to militants opposed to army rule.
The former army officer, Cho Tun Aung, was shot by a man at around 9 a.m. while he was standing in front of his home in Yangon's Mayangon township, a member of the local administration said.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release information.
A militant group calling itself the Golden Valley Warriors claimed responsibility for the attack on Cho Tun Aung, who also had previously served as Myanmar’s ambassador to Cambodia.
The Golden Valley Warriors said in a statement released on their Facebook page that Cho Tun Aung, whose rank it gave as major general, was serving as a lecturer who gave lessons about internal security and counterterrorism, as well as international relations, to military officers at the National Defense College in the capital, Napyitaw.
The group also said that Cho Tun Aung was a member of Myanmar’s War Veterans Organization, which has been organizing units of army-affiliated militias to help fight against pro-democracy fighters and ethnic minority guerrillas.
The group said that he was targeted because he was giving lessons that contributed to the military’s daily inhumane atrocities in Myanmar’s civil war.
Myanmar was plunged into nationwide armed conflict after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.
Cho Tun Aung is the latest victim of a series of assassinations since the takeover, targeting especially high-ranking active or retired military officers.
Senior civil servants and local officials have also been attacked, in addition to business cronies of the military and people believed to be informers or collaborators with the army.
A few months after the army took power, Thein Aung, the chief finance officer of Myanmar’s military-linked Mytel Telecommunications Co., and a retired major from the army, was fatally shot by three men in front of his home in Yangon, but no clear claims of responsibility were made.
In September 2022, Brig. Gen. Ohn Thwin, who had also served as Myanmar’s ambassador to Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa, was shot dead at his Yangon home.
Militants have carried out acts of sabotage as well as targeted killings. However, the countryside, rather than major cities, has carried the brunt of destructive fighting. - AP
