PONNAGYUN (The Thursday Times) — A Myanmar military airstrike on a camp for people displaced by the country’s civil war has killed 12 people, including a five-year-old child, in western Rakhine state, witnesses and a rescue worker said on Saturday.
The bombs hit Byar La camp in Ponnagyun township, north-east of the state capital Sittwe, on Friday evening. Khine Hein Htet, chairman of the Phyusin Yin Khwin Foundation, a rescue and emergency service, confirmed the toll and said 18 people were injured. Many of the camp’s residents had lived there for four years.
“They believed the camp was safe, and they sheltered there together,” he said. “When we arrived at the scene, most of the victims had died in one place.” He said the area was not a combat zone.
Chit Su Wai, a 27-year-old shopkeeper, said her daughter, aunt, and mother were killed. “We did not hear the sound of the fighter jet — it just came and dropped the bombs,” she said.
Bodies buried in makeshift graves
By Saturday the camp was a field of collapsed bamboo shelters, with an overturned vehicle lying among scattered household goods and clothes. Residents had wrapped the bodies in plastic sheeting and buried them in makeshift graves.
Aung Kyaw Min, a 45-year-old tuk-tuk driver, said his mother, sister, and brother were all killed, and that a niece and nephews were still missing. There was no comment from the military.
Local reports said a separate airstrike on an education office in Mrauk-U, another Rakhine town, killed two people, including a university student, on Thursday.
A state under blockade
Myanmar has been at war since the military seized power in a coup in 2021, setting off armed resistance from democracy activists and ethnic armed groups. Rakhine, which is almost entirely controlled by the Arakan Army, has been blockaded by the military and hit by frequent airstrikes.
The state is also the home of the Rohingya Muslim minority, more than 700,000 of whom fled across the border to Bangladesh during a military crackdown in 2017. The conflict monitor ACLED estimates that more than 100,000 people have been killed on all sides since the civil war began.
