An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group killed about 40 people and injured at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity said Thursday. They said hundreds of houses burned in a fire triggered by the bombing.
The attack occurred Wednesday in Kyauk Ni Maw village on Ramree island, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army in western Rakhine state, they said. The military has not announced any attack in the area.
The situation in the village could not be independently confirmed, with access to the internet and cellphone service in the area mostly cut off.
Myanmar is wracked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After the army used lethal force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, many opponents of military rule took up arms and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.
Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press that a jet fighter bombed the village on Wednesday afternoon, killing 40 civilians and injuring more than 20 others.
“All the dead were civilians. Among the dead and injured are women and children,” Khaing Thukha said. A fire started by the airstrike spread through the village, destroying more than 500 houses, Khaing Thukha added.
It was unclear why the village was targeted. The leader of a local charity group and independent media also reported the airstrike and casualties.
The military government has stepped up airstrikes over the past three years on armed pro-democracy groups collectively known as the People’s Defense Force and on armed ethnic minority groups that have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. The two groups sometimes carry out joint operations against the army.
Ramree – 340 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city – was captured by the Arakan Army in March last year.
The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It is also a member of an alliance of armed ethnic groups that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast on the border with China.
It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has now gained control of a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships, leaving only the state’s capital, Sittwe, and two important townships near Ramree still in military government hands.
A leader of the charity group, which has been assisting residents of the village, told AP on Thursday that at least 41 people were killed and 50 others were injured in the airstrike, which targeted the village’s market.
The leader, who was away from the town at the time of the airstrike, spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. He said he received the information from members of his group who were in the village and were facing a shortage of medicine to treat the injured people.
Rakhine-based news outlets including Arakan Princess Media also reported the attack and posted photos online showing people putting out fires at their homes.
Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh.