BANGKOK (AP) — As Russia's war in Ukraine garners international attention, Myanmar's armed forces are attacking civilians in air and ground strikes on an unprecedented scale in the country since World War II, according to a veteran aid worker who spent nearly three months in a combat zone in the nation from Southeast Asia.
David Eubank, director of Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian aid organization, told The Associated Press that military planes and helicopters carry out frequent attacks in areas of eastern Myanmar where he and his volunteers operate, bringing medical and food aid to civilians caught in the conflict.
Ground forces also fire artillery indiscriminately, he said, causing thousands of people to leave their homes.
A video shot by members of his group includes rare footage of repeated attacks by Myanmar military aviation in Kayah State — also known as Karenni State — causing the deaths of several civilians.
Manny Maung, an analyst at Human Rights Watch, told the PA that air strikes constitute “war crimes.”
Myanmar's military junta seized power last year, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After the security forces violently suppressed large peaceful demonstrations that opposed the seizure of power, thousands of ordinary people formed militia units, called the People's Defence Forces, to fight back.
Many of them are loosely allied with well-established armed ethnic minority groups, such as the Karenni, the Karen and the Kachin, who have been fighting the central government for more than half a century, in search of greater autonomy in the border regions.
Despite their overwhelming numerical and weaponry superiority, the military has failed to crush this grassroots resistance movement. Now the Army has stepped up the attacks, taking advantage of the dry summer conditions.
Eubank described the fighting he had seen as probably the worst in Myanmar since World War II, when the country was a British colony still known as Burma and was largely occupied by the Japanese.
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