Paraglider bomb attack by Myanmar military kills at least 20 at protest | Myanmar
At least 20 people, including children, were killed and dozens injured this week in a Myanmar military operation that used motorized paragliders to drop bombs on a village, according to witnesses and local media.
The attack hit Chaung U in Sagaing province during the national holiday. Myanmar has been grappling with armed conflict since the military seized power in 2021, and the village has been a key battleground in the war.
“I saw body parts [scattered] Witnesses said it was difficult to distinguish civilians from anti-junta fighters among the dead, a resident told the Democratic Voice of Burma news service.
The bombs were dropped from a paraglider equipped with a small engine, a low-tech and cheap weapon of the type that Myanmar’s junta has increasingly deployed this year. intensify air campaign against those who oppose it.
The victims were staging a sit-in protest against the military regime during a ceremony to celebrate the Thadingyut festival, the country’s biggest Buddhist holiday.
A local resident who attended Monday’s ceremony told The Associated Press that people began running when they heard the news of the paraglider’s approach, but it arrived sooner than expected. The paraglider returned the same evening to drop more explosives.
Footage of the crowd’s desperate struggle to help the injured and find their missing loved ones went viral on social media.
Amnesty International said the attack underlined the need to protect Myanmar residents. The international community may have forgotten about the conflict in Myanmar, but the Myanmar military is taking advantage of less scrutiny to commit war crimes with impunity,” said Joe Freeman, Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher.
The army did not accept that an attack was carried out in the region.
Myanmar’s generals are fighting a civil war that erupted after they seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. Most of the country, including the village where the attack took place, is under the control of armed opposition groups.
The junta announced that elections would be held on December 28, but a UN expert called the plan a “fraud”. Anti-junta opposition groups are banned or refuse to participate in elections.
Last month, UN inspectors published a report More than four years after the coup, the “frequency and brutality” of atrocities within the country continued to increase, he said.
Investigators said they had gathered significant evidence of systematic torture in prison facilities, including beatings, electric shocks, strangulation, torture through pulling out fingernails with pliers, and forms of sexual violence, including rape and gang rape.
