The casualties came as the United States and its allies denounced the military for its surging attacks.
By RFA Burmese
Myanmar airstrikes on a northwestern village and camp for internally displaced people killed 12 people, including four children, and wounded more than a dozen, an insurgent militia and residents told Radio Free Asia.
The killings came as the United States and its allies denounced the violence unleashed by the Myanmar military, four years after it seized power in a coup, and called on it to “change course”.
“They bombed the Koke Ko Kone school with two five hundred pound bombs at about 5:30 a.m.,” an aid worker in Kale township of the Sagaing region said of the early Saturday attack.
“They fell on tents where displaced people were staying,” the aid worker, who declined to be identified, told Radio Free Asia. “Up to now, we’ve found eighty bodies intact and three in pieces, so 11 in all.”
The Sagaing region has been particularly hard hit by the war that erupted after the military overthrew an elected government on Feb. 1, 2021, with pro-democracy militias that sprang up to try to end military rule, linking up with ethnic minority insurgents to fight the military.
Residents said four children and one pregnant woman were among the dead, adding that eight men and seven women were wounded.
About 400 people were sheltering in Koke Ko Kone village from two nearby villages after earlier attacks, they said.
Junta forces bombed nearby Tin Thar village, also in Kale township, on Sunday afternoon, killing a 50-year-old man and injuring a 23-year-old, a resident there said.
About 300 members of a pro-junta militia raided villages across Kale township, including Tin Tha and Koke Ko Kone, on Jan. 26, residents said.
But a member of a pro-democracy insurgent force said the military was trying to seize the area through air attacks.
“They began gathering their forces as if they were going to fight, then they left. Then the airstrikes came,” said the guerrilla who declined to be identified for safety reasons.
RFA tried to telephone junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for more information on the airstrike and the displaced people but he did not respond. State-run media reported that junta groups were performing clearance operations in Kale when clashes broke out.
The United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Britain denounced the violence unleashed by the Myanmar military and called on it to “change course”.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the Myanmar military regime’s escalating violence harming civilians, including human rights violations, sexual and gender-based violence, and systematic persecution and discrimination against all religious and ethnic minorities,” the allies said in a statement marking the anniversary of the 2021 coup.
“The military’s airstrikes are killing civilians, destroying schools, markets, places of worship and medical facilities,” they said, adding that a 25-fold increase in airstrikes represented an average of three a day.
“The rise in airstrikes in areas with no active conflict has marked a clear escalation by the military.”
The allies said the “current trajectory is not sustainable” for Myanmar and the region.
“Now is the time for the Myanmar military regime to immediately change course,” the allies said as they reiterated support for a peace effort by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.
They did not mention efforts by China, which has big investments in resource-rich Myanmar, to use its ties to both the junta and some ethnic minority insurgent groups to push for peace.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.
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