The Myanmar junta bombed a position controlled by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA)’s Battalion 12 in Kachin State’s Shwegu Township on Wednesday night, leaving around 17 people dead and wounding a dozen others, according to KIA fighters on the front line and local media outlets.
Regime jet fighters conducted two strikes, they said.
KIA spokesman Colonel Naw Bu confirmed the air attack on territory claimed by Battalion 12. However, he said the KIA was still verifying reports that the bombed site was a training camp and the casualty figures have yet to be confirmed.
“On the night of Sept. 17, there was a bombing by aircraft. We don’t have information about casualties yet. It is said to be a training site, but we can’t confirm that,” Col. Naw Bu told The Irrawaddy.
Photos of dead bodies and structures damaged in the airstrike spread on social media.
Local news outlet Kachin News Group reported that 17 people were killed and 19 injured. Meanwhile, junta propaganda channels claimed that around 50 people were killed in the attack and many others injured.
The Irrawaddy couldn’t independently verify the casualties.
Shwegu is located some 36 km west of Bhamo, where the regime and the KIA have been fighting for more than nine months.
It is one of the five Kachin townships where the junta imposed martial law on Aug. 1.
In March this year, at least 30 young people who had traveled to Mohnyin Township, Kachin State, to attend military training with the KIA were killed in a junta airstrike.
The KIA has captured hundreds of junta outposts and 14 towns across Kachin State since last year, and fighting for control of a number of towns including Waingmaw, Bhamo and Hpakant continues.
Since Aug. 18, when it announced a date of Dec. 28 for the first phase of its election, the junta has doubled the rate of its airstrikes, killing more than 100 people and injuring many others across the country.
