RANGOON — A woman from Hpakant Township’s Sai Taung village, in Kachin State, was gunned down by three men Sunday evening, according to local sources.
Three armed men reportedly went to the home of Nandar Hlaing, an administrator of the local village tract, under the pretext of complaining about a lost motorbike, at which point they shot her six times.
“They shot [Nandar Hlaing] at around 5:30pm [on Sunday]. The three men, who are young, went [to her house] with their motorbikes, and one of them shot her while the other two complained to her about a lost motorbike,” said Shwe Thein, a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Hpakant who said the shooter used a “short, small gun.”
“No one dares talk about this even if they know about it because this is a violent area, and it would be too dangerous for them. This was a planned murder,” Shwe Thein said.
The victim is believed to have been in her 40s.
A police officer in Hpakant told The Irrawaddy that a criminal case had been filed.
“We do not yet know who the armed men are, and we are still investigating their motivations for having murdered [Nandar Hlaing],” the police officer said.
There were also reports that a small bomb went off in Sai Taung village at around 2:30am on Sunday near the office of the Tai-Leng Nationalities Development Party. A series of bomb blasts in recent weeks has seen security stepped up in Hpakant, the heart of Burma’s lucrative jade industry.
