The remains of around 30 people, including women and children, were found in charred vehicles on Saturday, December 25 in Burma, according to a rebel official and an NGO, who accuse the junta of having killed them.
The NGO Save the Children announced that two of its staff in Burma were ” missing “. “We have confirmation that their private vehicle was attacked and set on fire”, in an attack on Friday in Kayah state, in the east of the country, the children’s rights organization said in a statement. The two employees were returning home after a humanitarian mission in the region, according to Save the Children, which said it had suspended its works in several regions.
“Clashes” for the military in power
Photos were posted on social media on Saturday showing two trucks and a car set on fire on a road in Hpruso township, with bodies inside. An official in the rebellion opposing the ruling military junta, the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), said its fighters found the vehicles in the morning. “When we went to check the area this morning, we found burnt corpses in two trucks. We found 27 corpses », he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on condition of anonymity.
Another witness said that “27 skulls” have been identified, “But there were other corpses in the truck, so charred that we could not count them”. According to the Myanmar Witness Observatory, “35 people, including children and women, were burned and killed by the military on December 24 in the canton of Hpruso”.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said clashes erupted in Hpruso on Friday after soldiers tried to stop seven cars driving in the way. “Suspicious”. They killed a number of people during the violence, the spokesperson told AFP, without giving further details.
Junta abuses and rebellions
Burma has fallen into chaos since the putsch of 1er February, which ended a ten-year democratic transition. Since the military coup against her government, former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been under house arrest.
In ten months, more than 1,300 civilians have been killed, according to a local NGO, the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners, which reports cases of torture and extrajudicial executions. In response, PDF citizen militias have sprung up in the country and regularly inflict setbacks on the powerful Burmese army.