At least six civilians, including some who had been wounded, were arrested by the military regime’s forces during the clashes with villagers in Yinmabin Township, Sagaing Region on Friday.
The clashes started about 4 a.m. Friday near the Thapyayaye village in the township after villagers had conducted a defensive action against nearly 100 military troops approaching the village for a raid.
Local residents claimed that the military regime’s forces attempted to attack the village because some of villagers and village’s monk have been leading anti-regime protests in the township.
In the morning, the military’s forces in the battle were reinforced with about 100 more troops. Meanwhile, hundreds of villagers from more than three dozen other villages from Yinmabin Township and Kani Township arrived to help the civilian forces fighting against the junta’s gunmen.
In the defensive action, villagers used homemade percussion lock firearms and homemade gas pressure guns firing glass or steel balls. They faced military troops using live rounds of ammunition.
“We must fight back against them, if not, our generation will face a worse situation than us. They have no laws,” a neighborhood villager who battled the regime’s forces for Thapyayaye village, told The Irrawaddy.
Local villagers said that in the afternoon, the military troops retreated into the forests after facing the combined offensive by several villages.
“We don’t know exactly how to decide to go forward. We have never seen such kinds of clashes between the military’s troops and villagers before,” a resident of Thapyayaye village told The Irrawaddy on Friday.
According to that resident, many older people and children have fled their homes in the village in fear of the military troops.
“We have no proper weapons, but despite that we want to resist the military regime. I would like to request ethnic armed forces to help us,” a resident of Yinmabin Township, who is one of those organizing anti-regime demonstrations in the township, told The Irrawaddy.
After the military regime used live rounds, hand grenades and explosives while conducting weeks of deadly crackdowns on peaceful anti-regime demonstrations, protesters across Myanmar are responding with defensive actions by using traditional homemade firearms, homemade gas pressure guns, handmade bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails.
Villagers have also conducted an offensive against the military junta’s forces going to Kale town in Sagaing Region for four days beginning Monday. Reinforcement troops sent to help regime forces attacking the town were met by the villagers using traditional homemade percussion lock firearms at a site 15 miles away from the town.
During clashes between March 30 and April 1, about five villagers were killed by the junta’s forces. Another villager was killed by security forces while he was at his home, local residents told The Irrawaddy.
Also, 11 other protesters were killed by military regime gunfire during the crackdown against the anti-regime protests in the town.
During the recent clashes in the township, military forces used lives rounds, machine guns, hand grenades and bomb launchers to attack civilians resisting them, according to the residents of Kale.
On Friday, Myanmar also saw two more deaths at the hands of military regime forces. A 26-year-old policeman, who had been participating the nationwide civil disobedience movement, was shot dead by the junta’s forces during an attack on residents in Tamu Town, Sagaing Region about 2 a.m.
In addition, Ma Su Su Kyi, an employee of the Yangon branch of South Korea’s Shinhan Bank, died in hospital Friday morning. She had been shot in the head by the regime’s forces while traveling home in an office car on March 31.
As of Thursday, 543 people have been killed by the military regime’s forces during the crackdowns and raids against the anti-regime protesters, bystanders, pedestrians and civilians, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
Tens of thousands of people across Myanmar continue to take to the streets daily to show their defiance of the military regime.
Thousands of government staffs are taking part in the nationwide civil disobedience movement defying the military rule.
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