Burma

Police Captain Shot Dead as Targeted Attacks Continue in Western Myanmar

Kyauktaw Township. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

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By Min Aung Khine 13 August 2020

SITTWE, Rakhine State—The head of Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw Township Police Station, Police Captain Tun Naing Oo, was shot and killed in front of his police station on Wednesday evening.

The police captain was sitting together with a police sub-lieutenant at a shop some 30 m from the front of the police station around 7 p.m. when four unknown men came and shot the police captain twice in the head from short range.

“He died of gun wounds yesterday. We are still identifying the suspects,” Rakhine State Police Force spokesperson Police Lieutenant Colonel Maung Maung Soe told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.

“We heard gunshots from the police station yesterday. We don’t know what happened because no one dared to go out of their house,” a resident of Kyauktaw told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity on Thursday. “We heard this morning that the Kyauktaw Township Police Station chief has died.”

Myanmar military troops arrived in urban Kyauktaw on Thursday morning and were taking security measures while many shops had closed out of fear following the shooting.

In June, a police lieutenant on the Kyauktaw Township Police Force was stabbed to death in broad daylight in downtown Kyauktaw by two motorcycle riders.

In August last year, Kyauktaw Township police chief Police Major Saw Than Lwin was wounded in a knife attack at the township jetty. In another incident in September, a police sergeant responsible for jetty security was killed in a knife attack.

Murders and attacks on police and village administration officials have become frequent in Rakhine in recent years, with some being killed at their homes and shops. None of the cases have been solved.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.