BANGKOK-
Government helicopters attacked a school and a village in north-central Myanmar, killing at least 13 people, including seven children, a school administrator and an aid worker said on Monday.
Civilian casualties often occur in attacks by the military government against pro-democracy insurgents and their allies. However, the number of children killed in last Friday’s airstrike in Tabayin township in the Sagaing region appears to be the highest since the army seized power in February last year, toppling the elected government of Aung San. Suu Kyi.
The seizure of power by the army triggered massive non-violent protests across the country. The army and police responded with lethal force, sparking the spread of armed resistance in the cities and countryside. Fighting has been especially fierce in Sagaing, where the military has launched several offensives, in some cases burning down villages, displacing more than half a million people, according to a UNICEF report this month.
Friday’s attack occurred in the Let Yet Kone village in Tabayin, also known as Depayin, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city.
School administrator Mar Mar said she was trying to herd students to safe hiding places in ground-floor classrooms when two of the four Mi-35 helicopters flying over the north of the town began attacking, firing machine guns and heavier weapons at the school, which is in the compound of the village’s Buddhist monastery.
Mar Mar works at the school with 20 volunteers teaching 240 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. She has been hiding in the village with her three children since she fled for safety to avoid government repression after participating last year in a civil disobedience movement against the military coup. She uses the pseudonym Mar Mar to protect herself and her family members from the military.
She said she did not expect any problems as the plane had flown over the town before without incident.
“Because the students hadn’t done anything wrong, I never thought they would be brutally shot at with machine guns,” Mar Mar told The Associated Press by phone on Monday.
When she and the students and teachers were able to take refuge in the classrooms, a teacher and a 7-year-old student had already been shot in the neck and head and Mar Mar had to wear pieces of clothing to try to staunch the bleeding.
“They kept shooting at the compound from the air for an hour,” Mar Mar said. “They didn’t stop for a minute. All we could do at that point was chant Buddhist mantras.”
When the air raid ceased, some 80 soldiers entered the monastery compound and fired on the buildings.
The soldiers then ordered everyone in the compound to get out of the buildings. Mar Mar said she saw about 30 students with injuries to their backs, thighs, faces and other body parts. Some students had lost limbs.
“The children told me that their friends were dying,” he said. “I also heard a student yell, ‘It hurts so much. I can not anymore. Kill me please’. This voice still rings in my ears,” said Mar Mar.
She said at least six students were killed at the school and a 13-year-old boy who worked at a fishmonger in a nearby town was also fatally shot. At least six adults were also killed in the airstrike in other parts of the village, she said. The bodies of the dead children were carried away by the soldiers.
The soldiers also took away more than 20 people, including nine wounded children and three teachers, he said. Two of those captured were accused of being members of the anti-government People’s Defense Force, the armed wing of the resistance to the military.
Security forces also set fire to a house in the village, prompting residents to flee.
A volunteer in Tabayin helping displaced people who asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisals said the bodies of the dead children were cremated by soldiers in the nearby town of Ye U.
“Now I am telling the international community about this because I want reparation for our children,” Mar Mar said. “Instead of humanitarian aid, what we really need is genuine democracy and human rights.”
Myanmar Now, an online news service, and other independent Myanmar media also reported on the attack and the deaths of the students.
A day after the attack, the state-run Myanma Alinn newspaper reported that security forces had gone to search the village after receiving information that members of the People’s Defense Forces were hiding there.
The report says that members of the People’s Defense Force and their allies from the Kachin Independence Army, a rebel ethnic group, were hiding inside houses and the monastery and began shooting at security forces, causing deaths and injuries. among the residents of the village. He said that the injured were taken to hospitals, but did not mention the situation of the students.
According to the Thailand-based Political Prisoners Assistance Association, which monitors human rights in Myanmar, at least 2,298 civilians have been killed by security forces since the army took power last year.
The UN has documented 260 attacks on schools and educational personnel since the coup, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said in June.