Junta airstrikes on Myanmar hospital kill at least 33
Singapore: Myanmar’s military killed at least 33 people, including patients and medical workers, in the deadliest airstrike on a hospital in nearly five years of civil war, according to health and medical organizations.
More than 70 people are thought to have been injured in the same attack on Wednesday night in the Mrauk U district of the fiercely contested western state of Rakhine.
“The large number of casualties occurred due to a direct hit on the hospital,” separatist Arakan Army (AA) spokesman Khine Thu Kha told Reuters. Images posted on social media, which could not immediately be verified, show the hospital complex being destroyed.
Dozens of people were killed and injured in the air attack carried out by the Myanmar army on Mrauk U hospital in Rakhine state. Credit: Facebook
Myanmar’s military junta has been fighting disparate armed groups for decades in some cases, but the war expanded and intensified after February 2021, when the generals seized power in a coup from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The military is using Chinese, Russian and Belarusian weapons to attack both military and civilian targets, including hospitals, as part of its efforts to retake areas of the country lost to resistance forces and crush other opposition segments.
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The attack on Mrauk U hospital was the 67th confirmed attack on healthcare in Myanmar this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that at least 33 people died in the latest incident.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which was forced to suspend most of its operations last year due to escalating conflict in Rakhine state, said the attacks were the deadliest on a hospital in Myanmar since the 2021 coup.
