Myanmar air raids ‘that killed children amount to war crimes’
(FILES) In this file photo taken on May 15, 2020 Rohingya refugees gather at a market as first cases of COVID-19 coronavirus have emerged in the area, in Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia. - Four more Rohingya refugees at vast camps in Bangladesh have tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total to 25, health officials said on May 25, 10 days after the first cases were confirmed. Health experts have long feared that the virus could spread quickly through the crowded settlements of shacks that home to almost a million Rohingya who fled violence in Myanmar in 2017. (Photo by Suzauddin RUBEL / AFP)
RAKHINE, July 8 (Online): Myanmar’s military has killed civilians, including children, in indiscriminate air attacks amid worsening conflict in the country’s western Rakhine and Chin states, a prominent rights group has said, urging the United Nations Security Council to launch a war crimes investigation.
In a report on Wednesday, Amnesty International said it collected new evidence showing Myanmar’s military – also known as the Tatmadaw – bombed several villages in Chin state in March and April, killing more than a dozen people.
One witness who was interviewed remotely told the group that an air raid in Paletwa Township on March 14 and 15 killed his uncle, his brother and his brother’s 16-year-old friend.
Two people from another family in the same village cluster said nine people, including a seven-year-old boy, were also killed in the bombardment.
“Our family is destroyed,” the boy’s father told Amnesty.
In another round of aerial raids in Paletwa on April 7, seven people were killed and eight wounded, the report said, citing testimony from a farmer.
The indiscriminate attacks, which Amnesty said amounted to war crimes due to civilian deaths, came amid a surge in fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group seeking greater autonomy for the Buddhist Rakhine people who make up most of the state’s population. Rakhine is also home to the mostly Muslim Rohingya, and borders Chin state, whose people are mostly Christian.
The conflict escalated in January last year following an AA attack on police posts and worsened in March after Myanmar’s government officially labelled the group a terrorist organisation. The AA posed “a danger to law and order, peace and stability of the country and public peace,” it said.
Stay tuned to BAAGHI TV for latest news and updates!
