- By Jonathan Head and Nicholas Yong
- In Bangkok and Singapore
Image source, Getty Images
The eyewitness said that the attack on Pa Zi Gyi was carried out by a jet and a helicopter gunship
More than 100 people are feared dead in Tuesday’s airstrike by Myanmar’s military, one of the deadliest so far in the civil war.
Survivors told the BBC they had collected at least 80 bodies, but expected the number to rise.
The United Nations condemned the attack, which targeted a village in the northwestern region of Sagaing.
The military has increasingly used air strikes against its opponents since seizing power in February 2021.
The spokesman for the military junta, General Zaw Min Tun, said on state television, “yes, we launched the air strike”. He said they chose to attack Pa Zi Gyi because the village was holding a ceremony to mark the opening of an office for their local volunteer defense force.
These anti-coup militias, known as the People’s Defense Forces or PDFS, have been waging an armed campaign against the military in various parts of Myanmar. Communities in Sagaing put up some of the strongest resistance to military rule.
With so many army convoys now ambushed on the roads, the junta has made greater use of air power, targeting symbols of disobedience to its rule. These include schools and health clinics; sometimes entire villages were destroyed in a scorched-earth campaign it hoped would exhaust the staunch resistance it faced in most of the country.
A villager in Pa Zi Gyi told the BBC that a military jet took off at around 07:00 local time (01:30 BST) on Tuesday and dropped a bomb directly on the hall where community leaders were meeting, which followed by a helicopter gunship that attacked the village within 20 minutes. Later, witnesses said, the aircraft returned and opened fire on those who tried to collect the dead.
The village was full of people from nearby communities who attended the ceremony.
After the airstrike, residents uploaded a video showing scenes of horrific carnage, with dismembered bodies lying on the ground and several buildings on fire. “Please call if you’re still alive, we’re coming to help you,” they were heard shouting as they walked through Pa Zi Gyi looking for victims of the attack.
They said they tried to count the bodies, but it was difficult because there were so many dismembered, scattered with torn clothes and burning motorbikes.
“Despite the clear legal obligation for the military to protect civilians in the conduct of hostilities, there has been a blatant disregard for the relevant rules of international law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk .
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the military and its affiliated militias have been responsible for a very wide range of human rights violations and abuses since February 1, 2021, some of which may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
Thousands were killed in the civil war, with an additional 1.4 million displaced. Almost a third of the country’s population is also in need of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.
There were at least 600 military airstrikes between February 2021 and January 2023, according to a BBC analysis of data from conflict monitoring group Acled (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project). The junta has increasingly relied on its Russian and Chinese aircraft to bomb opposition-controlled villages, causing higher casualties among non-combatants.
The exiled National Unity Government, which was formed after the coup, said these attacks killed 155 civilians between October 2021 and September 2022.
In October, at least 50 people were killed after air force jets dropped three bombs on a concert organized by an ethnic insurgent group in Kachin state. Last month, an airstrike on a school in the village of Let Yet Kone in central Myanmar killed at least five children and injured several others.
If the death toll in Pa Zi Gyi is confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest incidents of the civil war so far.