Editor’s Note: (Graphic Warning: This story contains details that may disturb some readers)
(CNN) As its gunships and warplanes rained fire and bombs on a village celebration last Tuesday, Myanmar’s military junta insisted it was targeting “terrorists.”
But among those killed that day – in the deadliest attack on civilians by junta forces since taking power two years ago – were dozens of women and children, the youngest just six months old.
CNN spoke to half a dozen eyewitnesses and survivors who said the people attacked in Pazigyi village, part of a self-governing district in the central Sagaing region, were unarmed civilians attending a community celebration.
The April 11 attack killed 186 villagers, including 40 under the age of 18, According to Aung Myo Min, human rights minister of the Government of National Unity (NUG), Myanmar’s shadow administration ousted lawmakers.
Families from the surrounding villages had come to Pazigyi to have breakfast at the event, a social gathering for the opening of a public administration hall. About 300 people had gathered, an eyewitness said. Children ate rice and played. People drank tea and talked.
The carnage began at 7:45 a.m. when junta fighter jets dropped two bombs on the crowd.
The aftermath of an airstrike on Pazigyi village in Kanbalu township in Sagaing region, Myanmar, Tuesday April 11, 2023.
A Mi35 helicopter then circled for 15 minutes, opening fire on the injured and those trying to help them, several survivors and activist groups at the scene told CNN.
Just before sunset, a military helicopter returned and fired on those who had come to cremate the dead, witnesses said.
“We heard a bang. I hit the ground, clutching my chest and there was a huge puff of smoke… I got up and realized my daughter was missing,” said a father who survived the attack.
As the wounded cried out for help, he frantically searched among the dead and injured for his 3-year-old daughter and parents. He asked to remain anonymous because he feared reprisals from the junta.
Minutes later, the overheard military helicopter began firing, firing at anyone who moved.
“It was a battlefield. People were scattered everywhere,” he said, struggling to speak. “A woman with ruptured bowels, she died before my eyes. I was shaking and scared…why would they kill their own civilians?”
“The smell from that incident hurt and the stench hangs in my clothes,” he said.
Although he was injured in the blast, the father continued to search for his family in the piles of bodies and debris. A few hours later he found her.
“My father was cut in half from his waist…my mother’s body was unrecognizable…my daughter was headless,” he said.
He lost seven family members in the attack.
The three-year-old girl (left) was among 186 people killed in the military attack in Sagaing, Myanmar.
Devastated, he told CNN his 3-year-old daughter is a “smart” girl with a “round, full face” and a “good speaker.”
One of the last memories he has of his daughter is of him helping her apply thanakha to her face that morning – a paste worn by Burmese women and girls to protect their skin.
“That was the last day she lived, was that the last time I helped her?” he said and burst into tears.
The father said he was trying to comfort himself with the knowledge that his eldest daughter survived at the age of 7. Some villagers lost entire families.
Since toppling the democratically elected government in February 2021, Myanmar’s junta has increasingly turned its vast arsenal against the people the government once represented.
It has used air force to crush a resistance movement determined to remove the military from power and restore democracy. But the strikes also targeted civilians, schools, hospitals and homes.
According to Kyaw Min Tun, Myanmar’s Ambassador to the United Nations representing the NUG, there were 56 airstrikes by the military junta between January and March this year. CNN cannot independently verify the number.
On Thursday – 10 days after the deadly attack – the military returned to the Pazigyi area for “clean-up operations,” Aung Myo Min told CNN.
The military carried out airstrikes on Thursday, sending around 200 troops into the area to “kill anyone who stayed,” he said. CNN cannot independently verify the report and has reached out to the military junta for comment.
Videos and pictures of the episodes in Pazigyi, shown to CNN by witnesses and a local activist group, show bodies, some burned beyond recognition or torn to pieces, and destroyed buildings, vehicles and debris. Others show the blind grief of survivors and loved ones, of parents crying out for their children.
Fearing more attacks, rescue workers and villagers spent days cleaning up the crime scene, sweeping away debris and burning human flesh that littered the ground.
Some survivors fled into the forest for safety and say they are now fighting for food and water – and afraid to return to their villages.
Another survivor, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said he had lost 30 members of his extended family, the youngest was just two years old and the oldest 70.
He helped cook at the event and said he survived by jumping into a ditch.
“My niece cried and hugged me, ‘Uncle help me,’ she said,” he recalled, visibly distressed.
“There were students, pregnant women, the elderly. What threat do they pose? This military is not human. It is wilder than animals.”
Those who survived must now confront the horror they experienced.
“How many children must die before world leaders act?” asked another survivor, who said his 1-year-old niece and 3-year-old nephew were killed in the attack.
The one-year-old girl (left) was another victim of military planes in Sagaing, Myanmar.
Daily attacks on civilians
Myanmar’s military has been waging wars with multiple ethnic armed groups for decades. Human rights abuses against the civilian population in the country, particularly in the ethnic states, are well documented.
But military firepower has increased since the coup, with almost daily attacks across the country, according to local watchdog groups.
A 2022 report by the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar says member states, including Russia and China, have been supplying the junta with weapons since the coup – equipment that could have been used to attack civilians. According to the report, these include fighter jets, armored vehicles and air defense systems.
The day before the strike in Sagaing, the military bombed a school and a church in neighboring Chin state, local resistance fighters and the Myanmar national unity government said. Nine people were killed in the attack in Falam Parish, including the headmaster, his wife and their son.
CNN was unable to reach the military to comment on the Chin attack, but it has previously denied attacking civilians despite a growing body of evidence.
At least 22 people, including three monks, were killed at a monastery in southern Shan State in March.
The military said the civilians were shot and killed by resistance fighters, while the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) denied they were in the area, blaming junta soldiers.
The coroner who performed the autopsy told CNN that the victims showed signs of torture and were shot multiple times, indicating they were killed intentionally.
Villagers CNN spoke to in Pazigyi said they did not know why the junta targeted their village.
Many areas in the Sagaing region are resistance strongholds not under the control of the military, which considers all resistance fighters from the People’s Defense Forces and the NUG to be terrorists.
This photo provided by Kyunhla Activists Group shows the aftermath of an airstrike on Pazigyi Village in Kanbalu Municipality in Sagaing Region, Myanmar on April 11.
Military spokesman Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun said the attack on Pazigyi was aimed at “terrorists”. The military also claimed gunpowder and explosives at the site caused a “large explosion” that caused death.
She claimed the resistance fighters laid mines near the site of the attack, which, along with explosives and gunpowder they allegedly stored, caused an explosion. The junta also said innocent civilians may have been forced to help the “terrorists”.
dr Derrick Pounder, an independent forensic pathologist who reviewed footage and photos of the attack, said the area and nature of the shrapnel wounds on the bodies suggested an “air-launched” weapon, not a landmine, caused the blast.
“The area affected by the blast, the nature of the shrapnel injuries, and the large shrapnel fragments visible strongly support the claim of an air-launched weapon and are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the claim of a landmine or series of landmines.” “, he said.
Some badly damaged bodies he reviewed “have burns with loss of clothing from blast effects and many show shrapnel wounds and mutilation.”
“Some mutilations are extreme with dismemberment and evisceration. Large metal fragments, possibly from the casing of an explosive device, are attached to some of the bodies,” he added.
Junta’s ‘escalating terror campaign’
The recent massacre sparked international outrage. In separate statements, the UK and US ambassadors to the United Nations condemned the airstrike and called on the regime to end its violence.
UN official Kyaw Min Tun said the “heinous crimes committed by the military junta are clearly war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“These attacks demonstrate the junta’s escalating campaign of terror against the people of Myanmar,” he added.
To prevent the junta from getting their jets off the ground, they exist growing calls for concrete action by the international community, including an import ban on aviation fuel and a comprehensive arms embargo.
“Anything we can do to make it harder and more expensive for them to get these gunboats up in the air, to kill people, to get their hands on guns, to get their hands on technology that will be used as weapons ‘ said UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews. “Anything the world can do to prevent these materials from getting into the hands of the junta can save lives.”
Andrews said the international community’s response to Myanmar has not been focused or strategic, in contrast to the “coordinated” approach seen in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The survivors who lost families in last Tuesday’s attack are asking how many more must die before such action is taken.
“We want you to give us practical help. How many of us will have to die? How long will we have to suffer?” said the relative from Sagaing, who lost many family members to the strike.
“Please don’t leave us,” he pleaded.
CNN’s Teele Rebane contributed to the coverage. Naw Kler Soe and Fon contributed from Thailand.