The Arakan Army (AA) has shot down a junta helicopter airlifting reinforcements and supplies to the Myanmar military’s Western Command headquarters in Rakhine State.
At midday Sunday, junta helicopters started dropping reinforcements and supplies for the Western Command in Ann Township, which has been encircled by the AA, while fighter jets strafed the surroundings. One chopper was shot down, an Ann resident said.
“The regime carried out heavy air raids with three fighter jets around the Western Command while helicopters and Y-12 aircraft dropped supplies and reinforcements,” the resident told The Irrawaddy. “When the AA returned fire, one helicopter was hit and blew a trail of smoke. I saw it flying slower than a drone before going down around Magwe.”
Local media reported that the craft was a Mi-17 helicopter.
AA spokesman U Khaing Thukha confirmed that a junta helicopter was hit around 2.30 p.m. on Sunday on a mission to bring in supplies and reinforcements and take injured soldiers back to base.
“Four helicopters carrying reinforcements and supplies landed near Western Command headquarters in Ann on Sunday,” U Khaing Thukha said. “We opened fire on all four. One of them was hit in the tail but didn’t crash there immediately,” he said.
Unable to reach its destination, it landed instead near Kyauksone village in Ngape Township in Magwe Region, he added. The AA also shot down a Mi-17 helicopter during fighting in Rakhine earlier this year.
The armed group has intensified its onslaught on Western Command headquarters since the last week of October, seizing a battlefield engineering battalion and a checkpoint outside Ann town on Saturday.
One Ann resident said: “Few junta battalions are left. I heard that half of the buildings at Western Command headquarters were destroyed in the AA’s artillery attacks, and junta soldiers in Ann town are disguising themselves as civilians.”
Only Light Infantry Battalion 371 and a military police battalion are left in the town, according to locals.
