Mynamar junta bombs church and camp for displaced
The attack was carried out just days after the junta's call for talks with the anti-junta groups. It hit a church that provided shelter for displaced persons, killing nine people, including children and a whole family and wounding eleven more. In the airstrike, the church and the camp for the displaced were destroyed.
Myanmar’s military junta carried out an airstrike, hitting a church and a camp for displaced people in Konlaw village, Kachin State, Myanmar. The attack came after just days since the junta chief called for talks with the anti-junta forces. A bomb was dropped on the area where many people, displaced by the fighting, sought shelter. Kachin Independence Army (KIA) officer Naw Bu said that,
“It hit kids from the camp who were playing in the area at the time, the camp itself and the church.”
Overall, nine people lost their lives in the attack; the majority of them were children under the age of 13. This number, however, can increase as eleven more people were wounded, and seven of them are in critical condition. The injured are in a hospital receiving treatment.
“In just one family, the father, the mother, and all their kids, six people in total, died.”
Naw Bu added. Many people in Kachin State are Christians. Belonging to Christian denominations or having religious affiliations other than Buddhism isn’t rare in the borderlands of the Buddhist majority Myanmar. In many cases, the attacks against these communities carried out by the military junta take on a religious undertone. Countless religious buildings were destroyed, and the junta forces targeted numerous religious leaders since the start of the fighting in 2021.
Source: RFA
Photo: FMT
