A toddler and two women, one of whom was in labour, are among the latest casualties of regime airstrikes that injured at least eighteen people and destroyed scores of homes in Paikhun (aka Pekhon) and Panglong (Pinlaung) townships in southern Shan State during the last week of April into May.
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On Saturday, two Burma army fighter jets strafed civilian residential areas in Mobye town nine times in the early morning while other sit-tat troops fired artillery from afar.
According to the Shan Human Rights Foundation, a regime airship dropped a 500 lbs bomb on Nyaung Wai and Sey Kone neighbourhoods, killing a 40-year-old woman from Paw Oo neighbourhood. In the evening, shelling from Light Infantry Battalion 422 killed a child in Sikatone neighbourhood. At least 10 houses were damaged in the attacks that day.
“A three-and-a-half-year-old child was killed and four people were seriously injured in the airstrikes. At least 7 other people were lightly injured,” said a man from Mobye on condition of anonymity.
According to the Mobye People’s Defence Force, which is fighting the regime along with other groups, two jet fighters dropped bombs on a camp for displaced civilians in western Mobye at around 4am the next day, injuring at least four people and destroying three houses.
Another anonymous source from Mobye commented, “They are deliberately attacking civilian villages and displaced camps in Mobye. When we attack them, they attack civilians to spread fear.”
On 25 April, an aircraft bombed Saung Phui village in Paikhun Township, killing a pregnant woman giving birth and injuring a medic and two others, in an area where there had been no recent fighting, the Shan Human Rights Foundation reported.
A third anonymous source from Mobye said, “We want the international community to know about our suffering. We would like to ask foreign countries to provide surface-to-air anti-aircraft weapons to the resistance groups.” The regime often flies jet fighters and attack helicopters low to attack villages where civilians live, he said, but resistance forces can’t shoot them down because they lack the technology.
According to the Progressive Karenni People Force, the regime flew airstrikes 179 times in Karenni State and Paikhun Township in southern Shan State in the first four months of 2023, 182 times last year and only 2 times in 2021.
