Junta troops have been shelling villages near Mindat Town since Sunday and indiscriminately firing when they leave their base in the town near the southern tip of Chin State, residents say.
The regime’s Light Infantry Battalion 274, which is based in Mindat, shelled villages with mortars on Sunday and Monday, while its troops opened fire in the town when they ventured outside their base, according to the resistance-run Mindat administration.
An administration spokesperson told The Irrawaddy that they had no causality figures for villages shelled by the junta battalion, but added “no one was injured by the military’s shooting in the town last night.”
The renewed fighting in Mindat Town followed 20 days without clashes, after seven regime soldiers were killed when Chin Defense Force (CDF) fighters attacked a military patrol vehicle in the town on July 30.
A military column from Magway Region’s Kyaukhtu Township was dispatched to Mindat last Tuesday.
The CDF responded by shutting the road linking Mindat and Kyaukhtu, residents said.
It previously shut the road in early June.
Junta scout planes began flying over Magway Region’s Yaw area—a resistance stronghold—and Mindat on Tuesday.
“Around 50 soldiers entered Yawmyo Village and searched villagers on Tuesday at 10am,” the local information group, Yaw Alin Tan, reported.
Renewed clashes against regime troops began in Chin State in May 2021, following the coup in February. It became one of Myanmar’s resistance strongholds. Martial law has been imposed in seven of the state’s nine townships as resistance forces continue to assert control over areas of the state.
