May 11 was supposed to be a very special day for Ma Thae Thae Soe’s family in Thone Pan Hla village in Sagaing Region’s Chaung-U Township—the day when her 10-year-old son Maung Phyo Ko Thant would be ordained as a novice.
The four-member family had all been eagerly anticipating the moment—the young novice-to-be, his father Ko Nan Ko, his sven-yearold sister Mi Thon, and Ma Thae Thae Soe.
But on the afternoon of May 10, a junta paraglider carried out an airstrike on their village.
When it came, Ma Thae Thae Soe had just returned from the tailor with the clothes to be worn on the big day. Her husband told her to hide with the children.
“As we were about to leave, I heard a loud explosion, and I froze in shock for a moment,” she recalled.
Then she heard her daughter calling her from under the bed. She took her by the hands and then reached for her son.
“But he didn’t respond. I went to my husband and found that he was dead as well. So I fled for the sake of Mo Thon’s safety,” she said.
The paraglider dropped three bombs. The boy’s head was crushed in the explosions, and the father too was killed immediately. The girl was injured in her thigh.
May 11, then, became a day for mother and daughter to carry out the funeral rites instead.
Thwarted hopes
Maung Phyo Ko Thant had long been looking forward to joining the monastery, and his only aspiration was to become a monk, Ma Thae Thae Soe said.
In central Myanmar, where the majority are Buddhists, it is traditional for parents to organize shinbyu or novitiation ceremonies for their children, for which they usually save for years. Young novices are often carried on horseback, while their sisters follow in ox carts, dressed in ceremonial attire. The ceremony typically also involves pwe—an orchestra and dance, drama, and comedy ensemble—and food for guests served at a marquee built either at the family home or the monastery.
Ma Thae Thae Soe could not afford a grand shinbyu ceremony for son. Her husband worked at a gold-panning site in northern Sagaing and only had some small savings.
“We only planned to donate some cash to the monastery for my son’s noviation,” she recalled.
“We wanted to make big donations, but we couldn’t. But we had done our best, and I was looking forward to it so much. We’d had some new clothes made to wear on the occasion. But now I’ll never see my son in robes.”
Four days after the tragedy, Ma Thae Thae Soe organized a merit-making ceremony for her husband and son, offering robes to the monks for the funeral ritual.
“My heart aches beyond words,” she said. “I feel like I am losing my mind.”
She is not alone.
The military junta has responded heavy-handedly to the nationwide popular armed resistance against its rule, including launching airstrikes against civilians in resistance strongholds like Sagaing Region.
The indiscriminate attacks on villages and schools have killed many children like Maung Phyo Ko Thant. The next day, a junta airstrike on another village in Sagaing killed 22 schoolchildren.
According to the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), the junta launched 2,679 aerial strikes nationwide from Jan. 1, 2023 to May 12, 2025. Among the 30,43 civilians killed were 441 children.
The NUG has called on the international community to take concrete actions against the junta to halt the atrocities.
