Myanmar’s military junta bombed a Buddhist festival this week, killing at least two dozen people and injuring dozens more, according to a witness and the country’s civilian government in exile.
They said that a manned paraglider with a motor dropped a bomb on Monday evening on the festival, which doubled as a protest against the junta. A second witness also reported that a paraglider had carried out the strike.
The attack targeted Chaung U township in the Sagaing region, where about 100 people had gathered in a field after sunset to observe a Buddhist festival of lights with a candlelit event, said the witnesses, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Myanmar is in the middle of a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions of others. Military forces and rebel groups were not actively fighting in the area that was bombed on Monday.
At least 24 people were killed and at least 40 others were wounded in the attack on Monday, said the first witness and Nay Phone Latt, a spokesman for the National Unity Government, Myanmar’s civilian government in exile. Amnesty International, a human rights advocacy group, said that 18 people had been killed and 45 injured, many critically.
A member of the Sagaing Region Strike Forces, a resistance group fighting the military government, was among those killed on Monday evening, the group said in a statement.
Myanmar’s military had not issued an official statement on the attack as of Wednesday evening. The junta, which has ruled Myanmar for a total of more than half a century, seized power again in 2021, ending a brief period of civilian-led democracy and setting off the war.
Sagaing, a northwestern region near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, has been fiercely contested by the military and resistance groups in recent months as the junta prepares to hold an election in December. Independent observers say the election will not be fair because many opposition parties have been disqualified by the junta and plan to boycott the polls.
Joe Freeman, the Myanmar researcher for Amnesty International, said he had noticed a recent uptick in attempts by the military to reclaim territory through attacks. He said the junta may be trying to increase the number of areas where voting can take place in an effort to improve the election’s credibility.
Pro-democracy groups and ethnic rebels control significant areas of the Southeast Asian nation, particularly along its borders with China, India and Thailand, although the military has regained pockets of territory in some of those regions in the past year. Most of Sagaing, which borders India, is contested.
In the last year, the military has sometimes deployed motorized paragliders, known as paramotors, that are capable of carrying up to three passengers along with mortar rounds, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a recent report. Paraglider attacks have struck civilian areas in Sagaing, Rakhine State and Chin State, according to the U.N. report.
Many residents of Myanmar have learned to take shelter before a paraglider attack when they hear its loud engine, which sounds like a chain saw, according to a report in April by Amnesty International.
But on Monday evening, people at the candlelit event in Chaung U did not hear the paramotor in time because prayers were blaring over a loudspeaker, the first witness said.
The event was held partly to celebrate Thadingyut, which marks Buddha’s return from heaven. Homes and streets across Myanmar are typically decorated with lanterns and candles as families pray in Buddhist pagodas under a full moon.
People at the event were also demonstrating against the upcoming election, and against military rule and forced conscription, the first witness said.
The bombing occurred at around 7 p.m., when the paraglider targeted the middle of the crowd, according to the first witness. Young children, teenagers and teachers were among those killed, both witnesses said.
A second paraglider attack took place in the area four hours later and destroyed a school building but did not directly result in casualties, according to the first witness.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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