Myanmar's military is increasingly turning to airstrikes with deadly results to try to crush stiff armed resistance two years after it seized power and plunged the country into a prolonged civil war, a human rights monitoring group said in a report Tuesday.
The military is heavily reliant on fighter jets and helicopter gunships supplied by its allies Russia and China, according to the organization Myanmar Witness and other experts. The group's compilation of 135 “airwar incidents” from July to mid-December shows the number of airstrikes has been on an upward trend since September.
Myanmar’s army has defended its actions, saying they are being used against what it calls terrorist activities and legitimate military targets. The army has long contended with ethnic minority rebel groups in frontier areas that are fighting for greater autonomy but now finds its forces stretched thin as it also battles pre-democracy guerrillas in Myanmar’s heartland.
Members of the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian relief organization that offers hands-on medical assistance to ethnic minority villagers in Myanmar’s border regions, were among the rare outside witnesses who were able to see the effects of an airstrike when a Myanmar jet fighter dropped two bombs on the village of Lay Wah in northern Karen state on Jan. 12. They observed the bombing run from a distance and rushed to the village to offer assistance.
David Eubank, a former member of U.S. Army Special Forces and founder of the Free Burma Rangers, told The Associated Press in a text message last week that since the 2021 takeover, Myanmar's military “has come with a speed and a force we have never seen in our 30 years of humanitarian relief work here.”
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