The death toll from Tuesday’s horrific air strike by the Myanmar junta’s military on a civilian gathering in a village in Sagaing’s Kantbalu Township rose to 110 by Wednesday afternoon, and was expected to increase as relatives and locals continued to recover the charred bodies and limbs of the victims.
Survivors and volunteers collecting the bodies said pieces of flesh were found scattered all over the site after a junta fighter jet bombed the event in Pazi Gyi Village on Tuesday morning. After the bomb attack, an Mi-35 combat helicopter sprayed the area with gunfire, inflicting further casualties and hindering the rescue operation. In the evening, a junta jet fighter conducted another air strike while locals were still collecting bodies from the morning attack.
At the time of the initial attack, hundreds of locals including children had gathered for a feast to celebrate the launch of the village’s local administration.
A survivor recalled that the junta fighter jet dropped bombs directly into the crowd of people, killing many instantly.
“Many people were stunned and they died watching the planes,” he said.
He escaped death by jumping into a nearby ditch and taking cover. From the ditch, he saw people cut into pieces, the severed limbs of children and scattered body parts. The building housing the administration office was also completely destroyed.
Relatives and local volunteers rushed to the scene to search for survivors amid the tangled bodies. In a video posted by a local activist group, rescuers can be heard asking those still alive to call out so they can be located.
The local volunteers involved in recovering bodies said they had found more than 50 separate remains belonging to dead children aged under 14. The majority of the children killed in the attack were primary school students, volunteers said.
“So far, we can say that more than 110 people perished in Tuesday’s bombardment. Five of them died from injuries [later] the same day,” a local volunteer said.
Volunteers said it is hard to count the number of casualties precisely, because the victims’ bodies were ripped apart and badly burned by the explosion.
“Thus, if we find a pair of hands and a pair of legs, we count it as one victim,” he said.
Many families from Pazi Gyi Village have lost loved ones, with some entire families being killed.
A resident of Pazi Gyi said many children had been orphaned after losing both parents and in the worst case, three generations of a family were wiped out in the regime’s air strike.
Ko Si Thu and Ma Thidar (not their real names) were desperately searching for their two daughters after learning of the bombardment. The girls, aged 7 and 5, have been missing since the attack.
They called their friend, Ko Aung, who was one of the volunteers retrieving bodies in the area where the attack occurred.
“Sadly, they are not among the injured. If the children were there at the time of the air strike, it is very unlikely they survived,” he said.
Ko Aung said many injured people are in serious condition due to the heavy explosives used in the attack. He confirmed that at least one pregnant woman was among the injured.
“It is hard to imagine the suffering of these innocent people. Many people lost limbs and suffered serious burns and injuries all over their bodies. I also sent a pregnant woman to the clinic who lost one of her limbs,” he said.
Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun confirmed the air strike on Pazi Gyi Village, saying it targeted the National Unity Government (NUG)’s armed wing, the People’s Defense Force (PDF).
“We launched the attack on them. We were informed that PDF members were killed at that event during the attack. They are opposing our government,” he said.
He added that if civilian casualties occurred, the blame lay with the “terrorists” who forced them to attend the event. The junta has designated the NUG and PDFs as terrorist organizations.
International condemnation
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “strongly condemned the attack by the Myanmar military” and called for those responsible to be held accountable, according to a statement from his spokesperson.
Guterres reiterated his call “for the military to end the campaign of violence against the Myanmar population throughout the country in line with the Security Council resolution passed last year”, the spokesman added.
The US Department of State said it was deeply concerned about the attack and called on the regime to cease the horrific violence.
“These violent attacks further underscore the regime’s disregard for human life and its responsibility for the dire political and humanitarian crisis in Burma [Myanmar] following the February 2021 coup,” it said in a statement.
The attack came just two days before the Thingyan water festival, a Buddhist festival held to welcome the country’s traditional new year marked by water splashing and public donations—though the majority of Myanmar people have refrained from celebrating Thingyan since the coup.
“As the people of Myanmar celebrate their New Year, the EU is deeply shocked by reports of the latest atrocity committed by the military regime in Sagaing, taking the lives of dozens of innocent civilians,” EU foreign affairs spokesperson Nabila Massrali said.
One top UN official said the global indifference to the situation in Myanmar contributed to the attack.
“The Myanmar military’s attacks against innocent people, including today’s air strike in Sagaing, is enabled by world indifference and those supplying them with weapons,” said Tom Andrews, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar.
“How many Myanmar children need to die before world leaders take strong, coordinated action to stop this carnage?”
