The aviation of the junta shot the participants of an event celebrating the anniversary of the creation of an independence organization in an area controlled by rebels of the Kachin ethnic group.
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Several dozen people, including many civilians, were killed on Sunday October 23, by fighter aircraft from the Burmese army in a rebellious area of the Kachin State, in the northeast of the east of country. Their target: participants of a concert organized in a village a few kilometers from Hpakant, a city famous for its Jade mines, in order to commemorate the 62 years of existence of the organization of Kachin independence (KIO), the political training of the ethnicity.
The targeted village zone included a training camp for brigade 9 of the Kachin independence army (KIA), the military branch of the separatist organization. Several Kachin celebrities, singers and artists, died during the attack, as well as many spectators among the public, and the KIA brigade 9 commander. The information did not filter until Monday, October 24 on social networks, probably due to the disorganization caused by the attack, and the internet cuts. Videos and photos show a tangle of reversed beams and mopeds, as well as photos of atrociously mutilated corpses extended on green tarpaulins.
According to some testimonies, impossible to check, the army would then have blocked the site, preventing that wounded are transferred to hospitals. Sources within the Kio advanced, on Monday evening, the figure of 80 dead and more than a hundred injured. The spokesperson for the organization, Colonel Naw Bu, spoke of a “shocking attack”: “the army dropped bombs not on a battlefield, but on the place where we were doing A celebration with civilians, “he reacted. The Junta’s news office confirmed Monday evening that the attack on “the headquarters of 9 e brigade” was a “necessary operation” in response to “terrorist acts”, but that the number mentioned of deaths was “rumors”.
training camps
The Kio is one of the few rebel armed groups which had not signed the national cease-fire agreement of 2015, and was therefore still in conflict with the Burmese army at the time of the coup d’etat 1
The formidable kachin guerrillas led to his camps a part of the demonstrators who took up arms to join the resistance from spring 2021. Ella also participated in operations against the Burmese army with commandos directly affiliated to NUG, In the Kachin State but also recently in the Sagaing region, in the center of the country, where the fights are the most intense.
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