Myanmar airstrikes leave five people killed

Five people have been killed in airstrikes on two villages inhabited by ethnic Karens in Mutraw district in Myanmar's Karen State.

According to Press TV, two human rights organizations said on Friday that two churches were destroyed in the airstrikes, noting that those deceased included a Baptist pastor, a Catholic deacon, a church layman, and a mother with her 2-year-old daughter.

According to the Karen Women’s Organization and the Free Burma Rangers, in the Thursday airstrikes another woman and her child were also wounded in a second village.

“Air strikes are killing civilians and destroying homes, medical centers, churches, schools, libraries, and monasteries,” the Karen women’s group said in a statement.

The Free Burma Rangers said their volunteers watched from a distance as jets made two bombing runs on Thursday over Lay Wah, one of the attacked villages in Karen State’s Mutraw district, also called Papun.

They said the volunteers arrived after dark at Lay Wah, where the five people died and the churches were destroyed.

The other bombed village was Paw Khee Lah, where the other woman and her child were wounded, according to the Karen women’s group.

Ethnic Karen minority groups, who live largely in the eastern part of Myanmar along the border with Thailand, have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy from the central government.

Fighting increased after February 2021, when the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

ME