Three displaced women, one of them pregnant, and three children under the age of 10 were killed by regime soldiers in Shadaw Township, Karenni (Kayah) State earlier this week, the Karenni Army (KA) said.
Junta troops from Infantry Battalion 249 arrested a man, three women and three children as the regime unit entered Shadaw Township on Sunday.
The male detainee managed to escape the following day, but the others—an expectant mother, two women with disabilities and three children aged 3, 5 and 7—were killed by the junta soldiers, the KA said.
Combined forces of the KA and the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force found the victims’ bodies while clearing the area.
The slain women were residents of Shadaw aged between 30 and 40 and identified as Daw Soe Mel, Daw Law Mel and Daw Me Moh. One of the children was Daw Soe Mel’s grandchild, and another was Daw Law Mel’s daughter, according to the KA.
Local media outlet the Kantarawaddy Times said their reporter found the third child still breathing at the scene among the dead bodies, but rescuers couldn’t save the child, who had a large bullet wound in his back and died soon after.
KA Adjutant-General Colonel Phone Naing said the junta troops that killed the six were reinforcements sent to Shadaw following a clash between regime soldiers and combined Karenni resistance forces in the township.
Resistance forces buried the slain civilians and were searching for the junta soldiers who killed them, Col. Phone Naing said.
Weapons were seized from junta troops during the fighting in Shadaw, he said.
According to data collected by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 20 children under the age of 18 were killed in junta airstrikes across the country from Jan. 1 to Feb. 7. Among them were four children aged between 12 and 14 killed in a junta aerial bombardment of a school in Karenni State’s Demoso Township.
As of Jan. 3, the number of children killed by junta forces in Myanmar since the February 2021 coup stood at 578.
As of last month, 754 women had been killed since the coup.
