Rakhine POW Massacre Signals Myanmar Junta’s Grim New Logic

On March 8, four Myanmar military jet fighters and four Y-12 aircraft carried out one of the deadliest airstrikes of the Rakhine war, launching repeated bombing runs for more than three hours. The target was not a frontline base, a moving convoy, or an active battlefield. It was a detention camp in the Darlatchaung area of Ann Township holding prisoners of war.

By the Arakan Army’s preliminary count, the attack killed 116 prisoners of war and detainees and injured 32 others, with many more wounded. Among the dead were senior officers, including Brigadier General Myint Shwe, along with several majors and military medical personnel. Some civilians serving prison sentences were also reportedly killed in the strike.

If confirmed, the Ann airstrike may be remembered as one of the most disturbing moments in Myanmar’s modern history: a military appears to have bombed a detention site in the full knowledge that it contained its own captured soldiers.