A disabled man was shot in the head, three other people were killed, and six more were wounded during three days of ground assaults and airstrikes in Wetlet Township, as the junta’s atrocities continue to mount in north-western Sagaing Region, residents said.
On Saturday, about 100 junta troops from Sagaing Township raided Wetlet’s Pae Ta Gyi Village. “A disabled man in Pae Ta Gyi village died after being shot in the head,” a resident of the village said. A 50-year-old man also died from a heart attack during the raid, residents said. Two more people were shot dead during a raid of nearby Htan Gyi Village, residents said.
“The same troops also raided Ta Laing Village in Sagaing Township on Thursday,” a resident of Wetlet told The Irrawaddy.
On Sunday, two residents of Htone Bo Kone Village in eastern Wetlet Township—a 10-year-old girl and a 60-year-old woman—were wounded by junta shelling. Htone Bo Kone village is about 14 kilometers from Pae Tha Gyi village, which is in southern Wetlet Township.
On Monday, four residents of the township’s Pauk Kan village—three men and one woman—were injured when two fighter jets strafed the village, residents said.
A resident of the village told The Irrawaddy that the two fighter jets began strafing the village in the evening and that the attack had not been precipitated by a clash with resistance fighters in the anti-regime stronghold. The source said that the four people wounded did not sustain serious physical injuries.
Residents of the three villages have returned after fleeing the raids, sources said.
Wetlet Township was raided by the regime troops by both ground and river routes over the weekend. Around 50 houses in the township’s Ngar Bat Chaung Village were torched by regime who arrived by river on Saturday.
Seven civilians were shot dead during a predawn raid of a village in the west of the township in early July.
Further west, three teens were stabbed to death and had their tongues cut out during another predawn raid on July 25 on an office of the All Burma Federation of Student Union in Budalin Township.
The junta has lost control over most of the Sagaing Region—a resistance stronghold—but is escalating efforts to hang on to its southern and western tips. These efforts include an escalation of war crimes.
