Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
27-02-2026
NAYPYIDAW: A military air strike by the Myanmar military in Rakhine state has killed and injured dozens people, local media reported, in the latest civil war carnage weeks after a military-backed governing party election win was dismissed as a “sham” by international observers.
Women and children were among those killed when air strikes hit Yoengu village in Ponnagyun Township on Tuesday, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) said.
The village lies about 33 kilometers (21 miles) northeast of Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital. It was captured by the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group fighting the Myanmar military, in March 2024.
The AA statements listed the names of 17 “innocent civilians”, including three children, killed in the strike. It said 15 people had been wounded in the attack.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been in political turmoil since the 2021 military coup, with the crushing of pro-democracy protests prompting a nationwide rebellion.
Thousands have been killed, and about 3.6 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. The war has provoked armed resistance from democracy activists and ethnic minority factions that have long held sway in the nation’s fringes.
‘Bodies scattered’
Pyae Phyo Naing, chairman of the Ponnagyun Youths Association, described the scene as “really bad”, with four or five buildings burned down.
“Some people were crying, while many dead bodies were scattered over the area,” the 23-year-old told media.
“Some people were running away from the scene as there were also houses still burning when we arrived.”
The western coastal state of Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, is among the worst-hit regions. Controlled almost entirely by the AA, it has been blockaded by the military and pummeled with regular air strikes.
The military blockade on top of the conflict and recent sweeping cuts to international aid have driven a “dramatic rise in hunger and malnutrition” in the state, the World Food Program warned last year.
In December, Myanmar’s military has acknowledged it conducted an air strike on a hospital in the western state of Rakhine that killed 33 people, whom it accused of being armed members of opposition groups and their supporters, but not civilians.
Witnesses, aid workers, rebel groups and the United Nations have said the victims were civilians at the hospital.
In a statement published by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Saturday, the military’s information office said armed groups, including the ethnic Arakan Army and the People’s Defence Force, used the hospital as their base.
It said the military carried out necessary security measures and launched a counterterrorism operation against the general hospital in Mrauk-U Township on Wednesday.
However, the United Nations on Thursday condemned the attack on the facility providing emergency care, obstetrics and surgical services in the area, saying that it was part of a broader pattern of strikes causing harm to civilians and civilian objects that are devastating communities across the country.
UN rights Chief Volker Turk condemned the attacks “in [the] strongest possible terms” and demanded an investigation. “Such attacks may amount to a war crime. I call for investigations and those responsible to be held to account. The fighting must stop now,” he wrote on social media. (Int’l News Desk)
