BANGKOK—Myanmar’s military is increasingly turning to airstrikes with deadly results to try to crush stiff armed resistance, two years after it seized power and plunged the country into a prolonged civil war, said a report Tuesday by a human rights monitoring group.
According to a January statement by the National Unity Government, an underground group that calls itself the country’s legitimate government and serves as an umbrella organization for opponents of military rule, 460 civilians, mostly children, have lost their lives in airstrikes. According to the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog group that tracks killings and arrests, 2,901 civilians have been killed by the authorities since the army takeover. The actual death toll is likely to be much higher since the group cannot easily verify casualties in remote areas and combat zones.
Although the military is demoralized and has been losing control over many parts of the country, its increasing use of air power is a major challenge for the resistance, Christina Fink, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University, said at a January 19 online seminar organized by the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C.“They have been able to purchase planes from both Russia and China.
The victims included a 3-year-old and her mother, a Catholic deacon, another pastor, and a villager who was helping at the church “and was disintegrated by the blast and only the stumps of his legs could be found.” “I saw firsthand 10 people who were killed in different bombing events and came up on other areas where many more were killed before we arrived. We also saw Hind attack helicopters in February. Almost every day shooting rockets, and machine gun into villages,” he said.
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