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Euronews
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
At least 17 killed in junta air strike on Myanmar school, reports say
At least 17 people have been killed in an air strike by Myanmar's military junta on a village in the central Sagaing region, according to several reports on Monday. The death toll from the Monday morning bombing on Ohe Htein Twin village in the region's Tabayin township, also known as Depayin, reported by independent media in Myanmar ranged from 17 to more than 20. Others reported that the morning attack killed at least 22 students and two teachers and wounded dozens of others. A member of the White Depeyin People's Defence Force resistance group fighting against military rule said a fighter jet dropped a bomb directly onto the school, where students from primary to high school levels were studying. The area is about 115 kilometres northwest of Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city. The resistance fighter, who rushed to the site of the attack to help the victims, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was afraid of being arrested by the military. He said that 20 students and two teachers were killed in the attack on the school, which is operated by the country's pro-democracy movement, and some 50 others were wounded. Three nearby houses were also damaged. Nay Phone Latt, a spokesperson for the opposition's National Unity Government, said he received the same information on the number of casualties and warned the death toll could rise. The organisation is the main opposition group coordinating resistance to military rule. Sagaing region, near the border with India, has been a stronghold of armed resistance and the military in recent years has stepped up air strikes against the local pro-democracy People's Defence Forces. The resistance has no effective defence against air attacks. Neither the military government nor state-controlled media have released any information about the reported air strike. The junta has increasingly used air strikes to counter a widespread armed resistance against its rule, which began in February 2021 when it seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. More than 6,600 civilians are estimated to have been killed by security forces since then, according to figures compiled by non-governmental organisations. In September 2022, aerial attacks by the military's helicopters against a school and village in Let Yet Kone village in the same township killed at least 13 people, including seven children. Air strikes in April 2023 killed as many as 160 people, including children, who were attending a ceremony held by opponents of army rule outside Pazigyi village in Sagaing region's Kanbalu township. Air strikes in Myanmar garnered increased attention recently when numerous reports deemed credible by the United Nations and human rights groups said that they continued to be carried out in the wake of the devastating 28 March earthquake, after which the military and resistance groups declared ceasefires to facilitate relief efforts. US President Donald Trump has indicated he is ready to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a present from the ruling family of Qatar during his upcoming trip to the Middle East this week. As US officials say the jet could be converted into a potential presidential aircraft — the famed Air Force One, questions arose over what would constitute an immensely expensive gift donated from a foreign government to a serving official. While the Qatari government said a final decision hasn't yet been reached, Trump defended the idea as a fiscally smart move in a post shared on his Truth Social platform Sunday. 'So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift, free of charge, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40-year-old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, top dollar, for the plane,' said Trump, adding 'anybody can do that.' According to ABC News, the US president would use the aircraft as his plane until right before he leaves office in January 2029 — when ownership would be transferred to the foundation overseeing his yet-to-be-built presidential library. Qatar's media attaché, Ali Al-Ansari, said that a decision had not yet been reached, while 'the matter remains under review by the respective legal departments" of Qatar's Ministry of Defence and its US counterpart. According to ABC, officials from the Trump administration have prepared an analysis which demonstrates that accepting the plane would be legal. However, the US Constitution's Emoluments Clause bars anyone in government office from accepting any present, emolument, office or title from any 'king, prince, or foreign state' without congressional consent. The US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer poked fun at Trump's 'America first' political slogan, stating 'nothing says 'America First' like Air Force One, brought to you by Qatar." 'It's not just bribery, it's premium foreign influence with extra legroom,' added Schumer. Other lawmakers also expressed dismay online, noting that an aircraft being offered by a foreign government could present security risks if used by a US president. The existing planes used as Air Force One are heavily modified with survivability capabilities for the president for a range of contingencies, including radiation shielding and antimissile technology. They also include a variety of communications systems which allow the president to remain in contact with the military and issue orders from anywhere in the world. Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said such a gift would be 'unprecedented". 'The totality of gifts given to a president over their term doesn't get close to this level,' Libowitz said.
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Myanmar village air strike kills at least 12, says local official
A Myanmar junta airstrike on a village held by anti-coup fighters killed at least 12 people according to a local administrative official, who said the bombardment targeted civilian areas. Myanmar's military seized power in a 2021 coup which has plunged the country into a fractious civil war and analysts say the embattled junta is increasingly using air strikes to target civilians. The Friday afternoon strike hit the village of Letpanhla around 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the country's second biggest city of Mandalay. The village in Singu township is held by the People's Defence Forces (PDF) -- anti-coup guerillas who took up arms after the military toppled the country's civilian government four years ago. "A lot of people were killed because they dropped bombs on crowded areas," said the local administrative official, who asked to remain anonymous. "It happened at the time people were going to the market". "We're currently making a list and have registered 12 people killed," he said on Saturday. A junta spokesman could not be reached for comment and AFP could not independently verify the death toll. The local PDF unit reported there had been 27 fatalities. - Wails of grief - Witness Myint Soe, 62, said he tried to hide as an aircraft came in for a bombing run. "I heard huge bomb blast sounds at the same time I was hiding," he said. "When I came out and looked at the market area I saw it was on fire." In the aftermath, buildings which appeared to be homes and a restaurant were ablaze, as people in civilian clothing and camouflage uniforms doused the flames with water. The limp body of a child with a bloody head wound was loaded into the back of an ambulance by a man whose uniform was marked with the PDF insignia. Wails of grief could be heard as some of the crowd glanced up towards the sky. Myanmar is now controlled by a patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups and anti-coup partisans. The number of military air strikes on civilians has risen year on year during the civil war, according to non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), with nearly 800 in 2024. That figure was more than triple the previous year and ACLED predicted the junta will continue to rely on air strikes because it is "under increasing military pressure on the ground". "The military will persevere in its indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian populated areas in an effort to undermine the opposition's support base and destroy their morale," it said in December. An offensive by an alliance of armed ethnic groups in late 2023 inflicted stinging territorial losses on the junta. But analysts say the Myanmar air force, which operates with Russian technical support, has been key to fending off its adversaries based mainly in the borderlands. More than 3.5 million citizens are currently displaced and half the population lives in poverty. bur-jts/fox
Al Jazeera
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Healing the young rebels of Myanmar's civil war
Mae Sot, Thailand - Within an old wooden house in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, wounded revolutionary fighters lie side by side. Many are amputees missing legs, hands, and arms. Some have serious head wounds, and others have suffered debilitating spinal injuries. Some are blind, and others are unable to walk. These young fighters have been wounded by landmines, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and sniper fire, burned by the flames of bombs dropped by warplanes and scarred by shrapnel. They have journeyed to this border town through the jungles from neighbouring Myanmar, seeking medical attention for injuries suffered in an intensifying civil conflict that is one of the longest and most vicious globally. Yet their place of recovery - Sunshine Care Centre - does not boast the sleek, sterile environment of a white-walled hospital equipped with sophisticated medical equipment and staffed by qualified surgeons. Instead, the estimated 140 war-wounded fighters at this centre are recovering in rudimentary conditions, mostly resting in wood and steel cots arranged under a traditional Thai stilted house. They are cared for by volunteers, who themselves have fled from Myanmar. Unable to continue fighting, most cannot return home for fear of violent reprisal by the Myanmar military, whose coup they have been resisting for four years. On February 1, 2021, the army removed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which ignited an unprecedented uprising against military rule in the nation of 54 million people. The coup – and the violent crackdown on peaceful protests that followed – is said to have propelled Myanmar's Generation Z, the demographic of young people born between 1997 and 2012, to take up arms. This generation went into the jungles and highlands to join ethnic armed groups and newly formed civil defence militias – known as the People's Defence Forces (PDF) – as well as participating in support roles such as nursing wounded fighters. One of those who joined the fight was Ko Khant, 23, who had his hand blown off at the wrist and lost sight in his left eye when an unexploded RPG rocket fired by military forces detonated in his hands. Resistance fighters often collect bombs and rockets that fail to detonate as their forces lack adequate weapons and ammunition, Ko Khant told Al Jazeera, though on this occasion the rocket exploded, causing grievous injuries. "When the RPG dropped from the [military] side, I went to pick it up, and it just exploded," he said. "Sometimes when the RPG drops they don't explode. My wrist was injured and my eye was injured with gunpowder." Before the military takeover, Ko Khant was a chef in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, specialising in European cuisine. After joining pro-democracy street protests and experiencing the violent military crackdown, he fled to Karen State, bordering Thailand, to join PDF fighters. He received some training and soon found himself on the front lines, where, in January 2022, he suffered injuries, becoming partially disabled. Smuggled across the border and treated in Thai hospitals, Ko Khant then came to Sunshine Care Centre to recover, and now he helps run the centre's day-to-day activities. He was offered a prosthetic hand while in recovery, but he declined, telling Al Jazeera there were other amputees in greater need. "There are people who are in need, a lot more than me," he said. "It doesn't feel like I have no hand."
