A lieutenant colonel was among the 11 regime troops killed in an attack by a People’s Defense Force on a junta base in Mandalay Region’s Sintgu Township on Sunday.
Mandalay People’s Defense Force (PDF) captured the base in War Poe Chat village on Sunday morning, the PDF said on Tuesday. The PDF is under the command of the Defense Ministry of the civilian National Unity Government.
It released a video showing resistance fighters and a captured soldier urging the remaining junta troops to surrender so that they could live to support their families.
The video also shows PDF fighters capturing the base where they find the bodies of junta troops who were killed. Those still living are shown surrendering and handing over their weapons.
Mandalay PDF said Lieutenant Colonel Tin Ko, head of the administration department of the junta’s No. 13 Military Training School, and 10 other regime troops were killed in the battle. Fifteen more surrendered.
Resistance fighters also seized 20 weapons and ammunition after capturing the base. The PDF group said there were no resistance casualties in the battle.
PDF troops recently seized another junta base in Sintgu Township.
Mandalay PDF has been engaging in intense clashes with regime forces around That Yet Kone Village in northern Shan State’s Nawnghkio Township, about 12 miles north of the junta garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin in Mandalay Region.
It seized a junta base in Tha Yet Kone village and defeated two junta columns of reinforcements in the area. More than 40 weapons, an anti-drone jammer and ammunition were seized from regime forces. The bodies of 21 junta soldiers were also found at the base.
Mandalay PDF said it lost some of its troops in the battle for the base in Tha Yet Kone.
The junta is responding to resistance attacks with indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes.
On April 14, Mandalay PDF bombed the junta’s Defense Service Academy in the garrison town of Pyin Oo Lwin in Mandalay using 20 rocket bombs.
