Badly hit: A man surveying the damage to a building next to the site of a military strike on a protest in central Myanmar’s Chaung-U township. — AFP
THE country’s military government acknowledged attacking a religious festival held at a school in central Myanmar, which witnesses said killed about two dozen people, including children, with bombs dropped by motorised paragliders.
A statement on Thursday issued by the military’s information office blamed resistance forces opposed to army rule for the casualties in the Monday night attack, accusing them of “using civilians as human shields in their anti-government incitement campaigns”.
Neither the government nor its opponents reported any armed combat near the scene of the bombing.
The attack took place in Myanmar’s Sagaing region and had already been reported by the country’s independent media and international outlets, including The Associated Press.
A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday declared that the “indiscriminate use of airborne munitions is unacceptable”.
Witnesses said the paragliders carried out two sorties, each time dropping two bombs on the primary school compound in the village of Bon To in Chaung-U township, about 90km west of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city.
The bombs, based on evidence from similar past attacks, were believed to have been 120mm mortar rounds that explode on impact.
Initial reports of casualties varied slightly, but a member of a local resistance group who attended the event put the death toll at 24.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to safeguard his personal security, he also estimated 50 people had been wounded.
The resistance fighter said children, villagers, members of local political activist groups and armed anti-military groups were among those killed.
The attack took place as more than 100 people were holding a traditional oil lamp prayer ceremony to mark the end of Buddhist Lent and using the occasion to call for the release of political prisoners, and to protest the military’s planned election scheduled for December, which critics believe will be neither free nor fair.
The Sagaing region has been a stronghold of armed resistance since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.
After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms and large parts of the country are now enmeshed in civil war.
Much of the fighting against military rule is being carried out by locally formed armed resistance groups loosely connected in a nationwide People’s Defence Force. — AP
