The Myanmar junta is getting ready to launch airstrikes in opposition to the Chin Nationwide Entrance within the nation’s western Chin state, a spokesperson for the ethnic armed group instructed Radio Free Asia, citing leaked inside army paperwork.
In keeping with the paperwork, which the Chin Nationwide Entrance, or CNF, acquired earlier this month, the airstrike is meant to focus on the group’s headquarters on Mt. Victoria, in Thantlang township.
“We can’t reveal the place we bought this intelligence data, however we’re getting ready the very best we will for the protection in opposition to this airstrike,” CNF spokesperson Salai Htet Ni instructed RFA’s Burmese Service.
He mentioned the paperwork revealed that church buildings, hospitals, clinics and faculties are additionally on the checklist of attainable targets.
Information of the plans frightened individuals residing within the space, a civilian residing close to Mt. Victoria instructed RFA.
“We’re the one village close to that mountain,” he mentioned. “If additionally they goal the village, we might be hit laborious.”
Thant Zin, the junta’s spokesperson for Chin state, has not responded to the CNF’s claims that the army is getting ready to launch airstrikes in area.
The army solely launches airstrikes when completely mandatory, mentioned Thein Tun Oo, govt director of Thaenaga Institute for Strategic Research, a pro-military suppose tank shaped with former army officers.
“The place is identical for all armed organizations within the nation. In the event that they view one thing as detrimental for his or her safety, they take army motion. This can be a very regular path,” he mentioned.
“However I’m suspicious that such an vital choice to launch an airstrike has been leaked to the skin. It’s laborious to say whether or not their data is true or flawed.”
Junta forces final month killed 63 individuals in Kachin state, lots of them members of the Kachin Independence Group, once they bombed a live performance in what’s believed to be the bloodiest single airstrike in Myanmar since final 12 months’s army coup.
Translated by Ye Ok.M. Maung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.