Mizzima
A string of deadly junta attacks targeting villages and towns near China’s oil and gas pipelines in northern Shan State has left at least ten civilians dead and 14 others injured.
The attacks happened between 19 December 2023 and 11 January 2024, according to a report by Shan Human Rights Foundation.
The indiscriminate junta shelling and airstrikes, often landing dangerously close to vital infrastructure and have triggered fresh anxieties about a potential pipeline explosion further endangering locals.
The worst casualties in these attacks happened when junta forces launched a relentless aerial and artillery assault on Namtu Town and nearby villages in Namtu Township in the last week of December. Despite this, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) took control of Namtu Township on 28 December.
On 23 December, junta troops at the Light Infantry Battalion 324 base shelled indiscriminately into Ward 3 of Namtu Town, injuring four civilians and damaging a mosque and five houses. Further shelling of Namtu Town on 25 December fatally wounded a 19-year-old woman and airstrikes the same day on Namtu Town’s Ward 3 killed two more people.
Two more civilians were wounded in Namtu Town by a junta airstrike on 29 December.
Beyond Namtu Town, villages along the pipelines weren’t spared either. Mann Li village, 200 meters west of the pipelines was hit by an airstrike on 29 December that killed a woman and damaged a temple.
The fear of further attacks drove villagers from their homes, leading to the deaths of four more civilians in Namtu Township in the first week of January. A 35-year-old Man Jarm villager succumbed to high blood pressure whilst hiding in the jungle, and at midnight the same day, a male villager from Mann Dee and his two daughters, aged 3 and 12, were killed when their makeshift bunker collapsed.
Junta attacks weren’t limited to Namtu. Airstrikes near Kyaukme Town, also in northern Shan State, injured three civilians and damaged twenty houses on 19 December. Another airstrike on 31 December damaged ten houses in Mong Ngaw Town (located north of Kyaukme), which the TNLA claimed to have captured the same day.
Neighbouring Hsipaw Township also saw its share of civilian suffering. On 28 December, junta troops stationed at their Hsipaw Bridge outpost indiscriminately shelled Nam Hoo Noi Village, 5 km west of the
town, where roughly 200 villagers had sought refuge in a temple. No civilians were injured. The shells were fired over a distance of 7 km along the path of the pipelines, landing about 700 metres from the pipelines.
Further attacks came on 10 January, with junta aircraft bombing Pang Ner and Kunsanglek villages, which damaged Pang Ner temple, just 200 meters southeast of the pipelines, according to the report.
Landmines also claimed victims, with two farmers sustaining injuries near the pipelines in Hsipaw. One stepped on a junta landmine while searching for a missing buffalo, while another fell victim near the junta’s Infantry Battalion 23 base, about 700 meters from the pipeline.
In Nawnghkio Town in Kyaukme District, junta shelling from Ohm Mark Dee village on 11 January killed three civilians including a child in Thonze Village.
