Guwahati: A government helicopter bombed a school and village in north-central Myanmar killing at least 13 people including seven children, a school administrator and an aid worker, reports stated.
However, the reports indicated that the number of children killed in the airstrike last Friday in Tabayin township in the Sagaing region appeared to be the highest since the army took control in February of last year, overthrowing Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratic administration.
The army’s takeover led to widespread, nonviolent protests across the country. Armed resistance spread throughout the towns and countryside as a result of the military and police’s use of lethal force in response.
According to a study released by UNICEF this month, fighting has been particularly intense in Sagaing, where the military has conducted repeated offensives, in some cases burning villages and displacing more than 500,000 people.
The incident on Friday took place in the town of Let Yet Kone in Tabayin, also called Depayin, which is located approximately 110 kilometres (70 miles) northwest of Mandalay, the second-largest city in the nation.
When two of four Mi-35 helicopters hovering north of the village started attacking, firing machine guns and heavier weapons at the school, which is housed in the compound of the village’s Buddhist monastery, school administrator Mar Mar said she was trying to get students to safe hiding places in ground floor classrooms.
Twenty volunteers help Mar Mar teach 240 kids in kindergarten through eighth grade at the school.
After taking part in a civil disobedience movement last year to protest the military takeover, she fled for safety and has been hiding in the village with her three children ever since.
She hides herself and her family from the military by going by the alias Mar Mar. Since the aeroplane had previously flown over the area without issue, she claimed she had not anticipated difficulties.
Mar Mar stated, “I never expected that the students would be mercilessly massacred by machine guns because they had done nothing wrong.
One instructor and a youngster as young as 7 had already been shot in the neck and head by the time Mar Mar and the pupils and teachers were able to seek refuge in the classrooms, and she had to use pieces of clothing to try and stop the bleeding.
For an hour, Mar Mar claimed, they continued to fire into the property from the air.
“They did not pause for even a minute. At that time, our only option was to sing Buddhist mantras.
About 80 soldiers entered the monastery’s grounds once the aerial assault was over and started firing at the structure.
Then the military gave the command for everyone in the compound to exit the structures. Mar Mar reported seeing over 30 pupils with injuries to their faces, thighs, backs, and other body parts. A few students were missing limbs.
She claimed that in addition to the 13-year-old boy who was shot and died while working at a fishery in a nearby town, at least six children were killed in the school. According to her, the airstrike also claimed at least six adult lives in different areas of the hamlet.
The military removed the slain children’s bodies from the scene. The military also took more than 20 people, including three instructors and nine injured children, she claimed.
Two of those detained were charged with belonging to the People’s Defense Force, an armed branch of the anti-military resistance. A house in the village was also destroyed by security personnel, forcing the occupants to leave.