Army attacks in eastern Myanmar worst in decades

[ASEAN NOW Content Team]

 

According to a seasoned rescue worker who spent over three months in a conflict zone in Myanmar, while Russia's war in Ukraine dominated global attention, Myanmar's military is targeting civilians in air and ground operations on a scale not seen in the country since World War II.

According to David Eubank, director of the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian assistance organisation, the military's jets and helicopters attack the areas of eastern Myanmar where he and his volunteers deliver medical and food help to civilians caught in the conflict on a regular basis.

 

Ground forces are also randomly firing artillery, driving thousands of people to evacuate their houses, he claimed.

Rare photos of numerous air attacks by Myanmar military aircraft in Kayah State, also known as Karenni State, resulting in a number of civilian casualties were captured on video by his group's members.

 

The air attacks, according to a Human Rights Watch analyst in New York, are "war crimes."

Myanmar's military seized control last year, deposing Aung San Suu Kyi's democratically elected government.
Thousands of ordinary people created militia formations, named People's Defense Forces, to fight back as security forces reacted violently to large, peaceful street demonstrations against the takeover.

 

Many are loosely affiliated with well-established ethnic minority armed groups, such as the Karenni, Karen, and Kachin, who have been battling the central government for more than half a century in the border regions, seeking more autonomy.

Despite huge numerical and weapons advantages, the military has been unable to put down this grassroots resistance movement.
Taking advantage of the dry, summer weather, the army has increased its attacks.

Eubank described the violence in Myanmar as the worst he'd seen since World War II, when the nation was still known as Burma and was mostly held by the Japanese.

 

"What I saw in Karenni I had not seen in Burma before," he claimed, referring to serious but occasional warfare in Kachin State in northern Myanmar.

"Air strikes, not one or two a day as in Karen State," Eubank explained, "but like two MiGs coming one after the other, these Yak fighters, one after the other."
"These Russian planes, behind helicopter gunships, and then hundreds of rounds of 120mm mortar."
"Just boom, boom, boom, boom," says the narrator.

Russia is Myanmar's biggest arms supplier, maintaining deliveries despite the fact that many other countries have maintained an arms embargo since the army's takeover in order to encourage peace and a restoration to democratic governance.