Junta troops beheaded three residents of a village in Sagaing Region’s Pale Township, and disemboweled one of them before departing the village on Wednesday, according to local sources.
One of the three men beheaded was a member of a People’s Defense Force (PDF) in Nyaunggon Village and the other two were civilians, one source said.
Their bodies were discovered after junta troops left the village on Wednesday. Junta troops had arrived the day before.
“Villagers fled when junta troops came. The three [residents] were killed as they returned to the village, thinking that junta troops had left,” said Ko Zaw Htet, a member of the Pale Township People’s Administration.
“Junta troops hung one head on a fence, and put another on a chair at an intersection. The third [victim] had his abdomen cut open, intestines taken out, limbs cut off and [then] put into his abdomen,” he said.
The junta troops that killed the three residents of the village entered Pale Township on September 9 from Salingyi Township’s Kyartet Village.
They raided Nyaunggon Village on Tuesday, the same day that United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report saying that the junta’s military was increasingly resorting “to brutal campaigns against any perceived opponent” and that “some of these acts may constitute crimes against humanity and/or war crimes.”
Pro-junta Telegram channels said that the three men who were beheaded were PDF fighters, and that two rifles, four magazines and 100 bullets and a walkie-talkie were seized by junta forces.
Ko Zaw Htet said only one of the three men who were beheaded was a resistance fighter and that the other two were civilians.
