On the night of October 9, Seng Mai was awoken by a deafening explosion that tore apart her shelter in Mung Lai Hkyet, a camp for conflict-displaced people in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State.
“The sound was so loud that I wondered whether I had even survived,” the 21-year-old told Al Jazeera.
As rounds of mortar fire thundered from the direction of a nearby military post, she crawled into a makeshift trench.
“A grandmother was crying and shouting for help. My mother was running barefoot,” she said. “Children were also running in the dark, struggling to reach a safe place.”
By the time the bombardment was over, 28 civilians including 12 children had been killed and dozens of shelters as well as a kindergarten and church were destroyed. Rights groups have blamed the military, which seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and has so far denied responsibility for the attack.
It has an extensive record of targeting civilians and civilian areas, however, and its actions have only become “increasingly brazen” since the coup, according to a United Nations-appointed investigative mechanism.
In August, the mechanism announced that it had found “compelling evidence” that the military had committed “more frequent and audacious war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
Source: ajazeera.com
