At least 30 people including hospital patients were detained and thousands of residents forced to flee their homes when regime aircraft and infantry attacked a village in Myaing Township, Magwe Region on Tuesday, according to local news sources and a junta website.
At 11 am on Tuesday, regime troops dropped by two transport helicopters raided Magyi Kan village in the north of the township while a Russian-made MI 35 helicopter gunship attacked the village, said local news site We Love Myaing, which monitors the regime’s atrocities in the township.
Regime forces arrested patients who were being treated at the hospital in the village along with their caregivers. Some civilians were also shot dead by the junta troops during the raid, according to the local news site.
The Irrawaddy has been unable to independently confirm the reports.
Thousands of residents from Magyi Kan and nearby villages were forced to flee as regime troops torched their houses and buildings.
In a statement on Tuesday, the junta said that following a tip-off about PDF “terrorist” bases in the area, it raided Magyi Kan and the adjacent Kan Gyi village.
The junta did not mention its airstrikes and arson attacks on the villages, but said it had detained 30 people, 20 of them women, suspected of having links to resistance groups.
It claimed a large quantity of explosives and uniforms with the logo “People’s Defense Force Myaing” were also seized from the clinic, along with three vehicles, and five motorbikes.
The regime also claimed its troops seized an improvised grenade, a vehicle, and 15 motorbikes from the school during their raid on nearby Kan Gyi Village.
A resistance leader of Myaing PDF announced on Facebook on Wednesday that he and all his comrades had escaped the junta raid but confirmed the loss of ammunition.
On Wednesday morning, MI 35 helicopter gunships returned to attack on Magyi Kan village while regime forces torched the remaining houses, the We Love Myaing group reported.
Earlier, on April 8 and 9, a military detachment burned down nearly 50 houses during raids on two villages in the south of Myaing Township and abducted and killed a 37 year-old-resident suffering from mental illness.
