Bodies of children and elderly people found. An attack by the Burmese army left 29 dead in an internally displaced person camp in northern Burma, a spokesperson for the ethnic rebel group which controls the region told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday, October 10.
“We found 29 bodies including those of children and elderly people. 56 people were injured »said Naw Bu, an official with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
The assault took place on Monday around 11:30 p.m. local time (7 p.m. in France) in an internally displaced person camp near Laiza, not far from the Chinese border.
The officer said that research was underway to understand the origin of the attack. “We didn’t hear any planes”he said, wondering if the army had used a drone.
Images broadcast by local media show rescuers equipped with flashlights operating amid the debris. Forty-two people were taken to a hospital near Laiza for treatment, Naw Bu said.
The United Nations and human rights organizations have repeatedly denounced the junta for targeting civilians during its bloody crackdown on all dissent, whether ethnic or political.
Also listen In Burma, the people against the army
Clashes have regularly pitted the KIA against the army for decades. Fighting has intensified since the February 2021 coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi from power.
“Endless spiral of military violence”
The junta accused the Kachin rebels of training and equipping the pro-democracy resistance groups (PDF) formed following the putsch to fight the regular army. Around 50 people were killed and 70 injured in strikes attributed to the Burmese air force on a concert organized by the KIA in October 2022.
The authorities in Naypyidaw assured that the information linked to the airstrikes was “rumors”. The repression that followed the coup left more than 4,100 dead across the country, according to a local human rights monitoring organization.
Kachin State has around 100,000 internally displaced people, a figure that has increased by more than 10,000 people since the putsch, according to United Nations data from March. The Kachin Independence Army controls parts of Kachin State, a hotbed of jade mining, a lucrative but opaque, poorly regulated and dangerous industry.
Burma is sinking into a “endless spiral of military violence”the junta increasingly resorting to mass killings and airstrikes, the UN human rights agency reported at the end of September.
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The growing use of airstrikes has spread fear among civilian populations, who have been targeted on several occasions, she said, noting “a significant increase” incidents in which ten or more people were killed.
Attempts at dialogue led by the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have so far provided no reason for hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.