Photo : Collected
Over 300,000 Rohingya, Rakhine, and other ethnic populations were displaced by the raging conflict in Rakhine State, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
Hundreds of Rakhine residents are fleeing their homes as a result of the conflict between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, with many also escaping due to the threat posed by the Junta forces utilizing artillery, small arms, and air raids to target civilian areas, reported Burma News International (BNI).
The need for humanitarian aid is reaching critical levels, according to a report from the war-torn Rakhine State, UNOCHA cautioned.
UNOCHA reported that heavy airstrikes and shelling by the Junta continue in Rakhine State, exacerbating armed conflict and inflicting significant physical and mental distress on the local population.
Since the resurgence of conflict in Rakhine State, the Junta has ruthlessly enforced its notorious Four Cuts Strategy, severing regional routes and waterways, resulting in residents enduring disruptions in essential goods, shortages of medicine, and food insecurity.
With numerous impediments hindering both international and local humanitarian organisations from reaching the war-displaced population, hundreds of thousands are facing increasingly difficult livelihood issues each day.
Nay San Lwin, a human rights activist for Rohingya affairs, said that the junta continues to target Rohingya people with shooting attacks, as well as arrests for conscription.
Meanwhile, on Monday, over 23 Rohingyas were killed, and 15 injured in the Myanmar Junta's airstrikes on the Thar Dae Muslim village of Minbya township in Rakhine State.
Most residents in Thar Dar, a predominantly Rohingya village in Rakhine state, were sleeping when a fighter jet dropped a bomb, a resident said.
The Junta's jet fighter dropped two bombs on the Rohingya village at 1:34 am on Monday, which also damaged several homesteads in a township under rebel Arakan Army control.
“The jet fighter fired continuously and dropped bombs which killed 20 villagers on the spot. Three of the 15 injured villagers later died in the hospital,” residents told Narinjara News, a rebel news agency.
Mawlawi U Hasa Nali (60), a Rohingya religious teacher, along with his wife and three children (aged 3 months, 5 months, and 1 year), died in the incident. The residents are panicked.
The junta has been conducting daily airstrikes with jet fighters and deliberately targeting residential wards and villages under Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, and Ponnagyun townships, which are now under the control of the Arakan Army, causing more casualties among civilians.
The Arakan Army has provided treatment for 18 people injured in the bombing raid. Fifteen others who sustained minor injuries were receiving treatment at rural clinics, a resident told The Irrawaddy, a rebel news media based in Thailand.
Thar Dar village has little more than 300 houses and a population of under 2,000. There are also internally displaced people (IDPs) from nearby villages taking shelter there, residents said.
Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin said, “The Myanmar military has never been punished in the country for the crimes it has committed. It continues to commit crimes with impunity against not only Rohingya but all the other ethnic people. Those crimes will only end when its impunity ends.”
The regime has carried out frequent air and artillery strikes on Minbya town since the Arakan Army seized it on 26 February.
The rebel group has also seized six other townships in Rakhine state, including most recently Kyaukphyu, where a large Chinese mega-project is located.
While the Arakan Army has announced its intentions to control the state’s capital of Sittwe, junta troops have focused their resources on both small and large-scale attacks against civilians, which villagers have labelled a pattern of indiscriminate killings, reports Radio Free Asia (RFA).
While there was no battle in the area to warrant an attack, residents told RFA the village had become a brief refuge for Rohingya fleeing nearby Sin Gyi Pyin village after it was also targeted. Rakhine state has also seen other attacks on the ethnically persecuted group, including an attack that killed an entire Rohingya family in Sittwe.
On 3 March, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported more than 170 civilians had been killed and over 400 injured since the fighting in Rakhine state began again on 11 November 2023.
Messenger/Disha
