The nation’s military has increasingly used low-cost aircraft in escalating aerial attacks that kill civilians in its conflict with armed, anti-government groups, a UN investigation said in a report.
Separately, a major ethnic armed group fighting the government in Rakhine state said 20 civilians had been killed in strikes by the military so far this month.
In the past, the military has said it only attacks legitimate targets of war, accusing the resistance forces of being terrorists.
The report by the United Nations-established Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, or IIMM, details a yearlong investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Myanmar’s military and affiliated militias, as well as the opposition armed groups.
It found that abuses escalated around the country’s army-organised elections in December and January. The IIMM said it observed a notable escalation in aerial attacks in the months preceding the elections and that they have continued unabated afterward, with investigators also documenting a pattern of deliberate arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence.
The IIMM said civilian casualties are worsened by the military’s increasing use of “double-tap” aerial attacks, in which a second strike follows the first, apparently targeting first responders, people helping the wounded and those trying to flee.
The IIMM said the Myanmar military was increasingly using motorised paragliders – also known as paramotors – as well as gyrocopters and drones to carry out low-altitude airstrikes with unguided explosives.
In several recent incidents in the upper Sagaing region, paramotor pilots allegedly cut their engines as they approached targets, allowing them to glide silently and leaving civilians little or no warning to flee or seek shelter, the report said.
The IIMM’s report came as the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic armed group fighting the army in Rakhine, said that about 20 civilians were killed and 22 injured in airstrikes across three townships from Aug 1 to 11, including one attack involving up to eight aircraft that lasted about an hour.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent organisation that keeps detailed tallies of arrests and casualties linked to the civil war, more than 8,000 civilians have been killed and more than 31,000 arrested by Myanmar’s security forces since 2021. — AP
