Resistance administration says junta gyrocopter attack killed 7, injured 15 in Pauk as Myanmar columns advance

Mizzima

Seven residents were killed and 15 injured when junta gyrocopters attacked villages in southern Pauk Township, Magway Region, on the afternoon of 3 November, according to the Humanitarian Department of the resistance-run Pauk Township People’s Administration. The department’s account could not be independently verified, and the junta has not commented.

The department said the dead include four teenage boys and two girls or young women from Kyauk Khwat village and a 90-year-old blind woman from Lellan village. Fifteen people from Kyauk Khwat and Lellan, including a senior novice monk, were injured. It said three gyrocopters took off from Bagan-Nyaung-U Airport and attacked Kyauk Khwat, Aing Gyi and Lellan villages and that there was no active fighting there. Homes were destroyed and livestock killed.

The attack came as junta troops entered the township. Nearly 500 soldiers from Weapon Factory 22 in Seikphyu Township and local Pyusawhti militia members advanced into Pauk in three columns on 3 November, looting and burning homes, the department told Mizzima and BNI. More than 3,000 households, over 12,000 people from 19 villages, have fled to forests, it said.

The department said earlier that over 3,000 people from southern Pauk villages including Wunchone, Kyauk Khwat, Aing Gyi, Thee Chauk, Tharaphi and Lellan were hiding in forests because of attacks by jets, Mi-35 helicopters, gyrocopters and heavy artillery from the “No. 24 Defense Industry factory”. On 29 October it said over 5,300 residents of Thapyay Yae, Chat Kan, Mhan Htaung Kwin and other villages were fleeing a column that advanced during the last week of October, and that over 3,000 people from northern Pauk villages including Kan Thit, Na That, Son Kone and Kyet Su Aing have been displaced for over three months as columns head toward the oil fields.