Several people, most of them students, have been killed in an airstrike allegedly by ‘s military on two private schools in a village in the western state of Rakhine, the and local media have said.
The conflict in Rakhine is one of several armed struggles taking place in the Asian country since the military led by democracy icon in 2021.
The AA, an ethnic minority armed group leading one uprising against the junta, began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023. It has so far gained control of a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships.
What do we know about the attack in Rakhine?
In a statement on the messaging app Telegram on Saturday, the AA said the military attacked two private high schools in the village of Thayet Thapin in the township of Kyauktaw, which it controls, killing 19 students aged between 15 and 21 and wounding 22 more.
Kyauktaw is situated 250 kilometers (150 miles) southwest of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city,
Local online media in the state reported that 22 students were killed in the strike, with one outlet, Myanmar Now, saying a junta warplane dropped two 500-pound (227-kg) bombs on one school while students were sleeping just after midnight on Friday.
The two schools were named as the Pyinnyar Pan Khinn and A Myin Thit private high schools.
The reports cannot be independently confirmed amid limited communications in the region.
The military has not announced any attack in the area.
UN decries ‘brutal attack’ in Rakhine
The UN’s children’s agency, UNICEF condemned what it called a “brutal attack,” saying it added “to a pattern of increasingly devastating violence in Rakhine State, with children and families paying the ultimate price”.
The military faces regular accusations of striking civilian communities as it struggles to contain uprisings across the country. More than 7,200 people are estimated to have been killed by security forces since the 2021 coup.
Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, saw a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that led to some 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims leaving their homes to .
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
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