BANGKOK (AP) — As Russia’s war in Ukraine dominates the world, Myanmar’s military is carrying out air and ground strikes against civilians on a scale unmatched in the country since World War II, according to a longtime rescuer who spent almost three months in the fighting. zone in the country of Southeast Asia.
David Eubank, director of the Free Burmese Rangers humanitarian relief organization, told The Associated Press that military planes and helicopters frequently attack areas in eastern Myanmar, where he and his volunteers operate to deliver medical and food aid to civilians in distress. position. conflict.
The ground forces are also firing artillery—indiscriminately, he said—forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.
The video, filmed by members of his team, includes rare footage of repeated Myanmar military airstrikes in Kaya State, also known as Karenni State, which killed several civilians.
A New York-based Human Rights Watch analyst called the air attacks “war crimes.”
Myanmar’s military seized power last year, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After security forces brutally cracked down on mass peaceful street demonstrations against the takeover, thousands of ordinary people formed militia units dubbed the “People’s Defense Forces” to fight back.
Many of them have little ties to well-established armed ethnic minority groups such as the Karenni, Karen, and Kachins, who have been fighting the central government for more than half a century for greater autonomy in the border areas.
Despite the overwhelming superiority in numbers and weapons, the military failed to suppress this massive resistance movement. The army stepped up attacks, taking advantage of dry summer conditions.
Eubank described the fighting he saw as probably the worst in Myanmar since World War II, when the country was a British colony still known as Burma and largely occupied by the Japanese.
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Serious but sporadic fighting had been fought in Kachin State in northern Myanmar for several years, he said, “but what I saw in Karenni I had not seen before in Burma.”
“Air strikes, not one or two a day like in Karen State, but like two MiGs coming one after the other, these Yak fighters, one after the other,” Eubank said. “The rear attack helicopters, those Russian planes, and then just brought in hundreds of 120mm mortar shells. Just boom, boom, boom, boom.”
Russia is the main arms supplier to the Myanmar military, maintaining the supply even as many other countries maintain embargoes since the army seized power to promote peace and a return to democratic rule.
Eubank knows what he’s talking about. He was a Special Forces and US Army Rangers officer before he and some ethnic minority leaders from Myanmar founded the religious organization Free Rangers of Burma in 1997. Two of its members have been killed in Kaya state since late February, one in an airstrike and the other in a mortar attack.
Drone footage taken by the group shows the impact of the army’s advance on the Karenni settlements: burning buildings and thick smoke in the sky. In a February 24 report in the state-run Myanma Alnn Daily, the military admitted to using airstrikes and heavy artillery to destroy so-called “terrorist groups” near the state capital, Loikaw.
As the death toll rises, people must fight for their lives by hiding in rough underground shelters lined with bamboo. A nighttime air raid on 23 February northwest of Loikau killed two villagers, injured three and destroyed several buildings.
“These are war crimes,” Manny Maung, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Myanmar, told AP. “These attacks by the military on civilians, civilian buildings, killings of civilians, public buildings such as religious buildings, yes, they are nothing but war crimes that are happening right now in this particular area, and this is because they are without dismantling aimed at civilians.
As in Kaya, the military is now heavily hitting Sagaing in upper central Myanmar, burning villages and actively engaging poorly armed militias.
The UN Refugee Agency reports that 52,000 people across the country fled their homes in the last week of February. He estimates that the total number of internally displaced persons since the military coup is just over half a million. The casualty figures are unclear given the government’s control over information and the remoteness of the war zones.
Security forces have killed more than 1,670 civilians since the army seized power last February, according to the Political Prisoners Aid Association, a human rights group that monitors arrests and deaths. But his counts mostly come from the cities of Myanmar, and there are generally no casualties in combat in the countryside.
“In the midst of all this, we have Ukraine, which is a tragedy, and I am very grateful for the help the world has given Ukraine,” Eubank said. “But Karenni’s people ask me, ‘Don’t we count? … And, of course, the people of Ukraine need help. But so are we. Why? Why isn’t anyone helping us?”