At least 20 people including two small children were killed and dozens injured by the junta’s latest airstrikes in Shan State’s Kyaukme and Mandalay Region’s Myingyan Township over the weekend.
On Saturday, a junta warplane dropped two bombs on a district hospital in Kyaukme, northern Shan State, which is controlled by the ethnic Ta’ang National Liberation Army, killing three including two female public health workers who had joined the civil disobedience movement since the 2021 putsch.
One male patient died while being evacuated and at least 20 other locals being treated at the hospital were badly injured, according to sources.
“The bombs landed at the back of a room where we were having a meeting,” one health worker who survived the bombing told The Irrawaddy. “My two female colleagues died immediately. I was almost trapped beneath the debris. Many were seriously hurt and their bones broken.”
When the Irrawaddy visited the hospital after the bombing raid, almost all the buildings had been flattened, suggesting that the facility was deliberately targeted.
The TNLA captured Kyaukme early last August during the second phase of the Brotherhood Alliance’s Operation 1027.
The Health Ministry of Myanmar’s parallel National Unity Government and the central executive committee of the Palaung State Liberation Front/TNLA issued statements condemning the airstrike.
On Sunday, bombing and strafing also left 17 dead in Singup village in rural Myingyaing Township, Mandalay Region.
A junta jet dropped two bombs around 7:30 a.m. before Mi-35 gunships strafed the village, targeting the vicinity of the school, residents said.
“Sixteen were killed immediately and one more died later. Some of the injured are in critical condition,” a resident said.
A visiting couple and their two children were among those killed, he said. One of them was an infant and the other four years old.
“They have been buried,” he added.
The airstrikes came a few days after pro-junta Telegram channels claimed that People’s Defense Force (PDF) groups were active near the village, according to residents.
