Around 35 Myanmar junta troops, including a major, were reportedly killed by the Ka-chin Independence Army (KIA) and resistance groups during an attempted nighttime raid on a police outpost in Indaw Township, Sagaing Region, on Sunday.
The outpost in Mae Sar village, 18km south of Indaw, was targeted at 3am, according to Indaw Revolution, the media wing of Indaw People’s Defense Force (PDF).
“Our raid intended to seize the police outpost as we thought there were only 30 troops there. But there were around 100, including police and Pyu Saw Htee militia mem-bers, with strong bunkers,” an Indaw Revolution member told The Irrawaddy on Mon-day.
During five hours of fighting, resistance forces breached and destroyed many bunkers but failed to occupy the outpost, the group said.
Ko Win Liwn Oo, 19, a PDF member, was killed and three others injured. A teenage resident was also killed.
The group estimated that around 30 soldiers, police and pro-regime militia members were killed.
The PDF representative said 10 regime funerals, including one believed to be for a major, were held in Kantbalu Township, Sagaing Region, after the bodies were trans-ported by military helicopter.
The resistance forces also attacked around 30 regime reinforcements heading to the outpost on Sunday morning.
In the ambush, five more junta troops were also killed, said the PDF spokesman. A private fuel truck was burned after being trapped in the shootout but the drivers es-caped.
The Irrawaddy was unable to independently confirm the military casualties.
Junta forces face attacks and ambushes from PDFs and ethnic armed organizations across the country nearly every day.
The regime forces are committing atrocities, arbitrary arrests, killings, massacres, burning alive and using civilians as human shields and carrying out air raids and shelling residential areas and looting and burning houses, especially in Chin, Kachin, Shan, Kayah, Mon and Karen states and Magwe, Mandalay and Sagaing regions.
