Earlier Sunday (March 28), approximately 3,000 people crossed the river separating the two countries into Thailand’s Mae Hong Son territory following two days of aerial strikes.
Along the country’s northwestern boundary, Thai governments braced themselves on Monday for a possible entrance of more ethnic Karen villagers escaping the Myanmar military’s new airstrikes.
Myanmar military aircraft sent out three strikes overnight on Sunday into Monday. According to Free Burma Rangers, a charitable relief company that gives medical and other support to villagers. The strikes possibly wounded one person but caused no apparent fatalities, a member of the company said.
Earlier Sunday (March 28), approximately 3,000 people passed the river. This river divides the two countries into Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province following two days of aerial strikes.
Video shot that day shows villagers’ gathering, including several young children. They rested in a forest area inside Myanmar, having decamped their homes. They took their possessions in bundles and boxes.
According to workers for two great relief companies in Sunday’s past attacks, Myanmar military aircraft shot bombs on a Karen soldier position in the Salween River in Karen state’s Mutraw district.
Two soldiers were killed, and many more were injured in those strikes, said a Free Burma Rangers member.
The rise in the increasingly violent crackdown
On Saturday night (March 27), two Myanmar army planes twice attacked Deh Bu Noh village in Mutraw district, killing at least two villagers.
The strikes may have been revenge for the Karen National Liberation Army. They are battling greater autonomy to the Karen people, striking and capturing a government military outpost on Saturday morning.
According to Thoolei News, an online site that provides an official report from the KNU, eight government soldiers, including a second lieutenant, were caught in the attack. Ten were shot and killed, including one lieutenant colonel who was an assistant battalion commander. The report said one Karen guerrilla had been killed.
The frontier’s pressure comes as the directors of the resistance to last month’s coup. It has been toppled Myanmar’s elected government is investigating to have the Karen and separate ethnic groups band together and follow them as collaborators add an armed part to their fight.
The airstrikes indicate a rise in the increasingly violent crackdown by the Myanmar government against opponents of the February 1 army takeover.
At most concise, 114 people over the country were killed by security forces near Saturday alone. It includes many children, a toll that has proposed a UN human rights authority to accuse the junta of performing mass destruction and examine the international community for not doing enough to stop it.
Myanmar: Fired into crowds of protesters
The council has denounced the violence and called for a refurbishment of democracy. However, it has not yet recognized possible consents against the military, which would need support or an abstention by Myanmar’s next-door-neighbor friend China.
The stroke, which bounced Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected council, rearranged years of progress toward democracy after five military law decades. Again, it has made Myanmar the center of international investigation as security forces have frequently fired into crowds of protesters.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, at least 459 people have been killed since the takeover, which should tally deaths it could verify. The actual toll is believed to be higher.
Image courtesy of Sky News Australia/YouTube Screenshot