City a battle zone as Myanmar junta enforces martial law

Plumes of smoke rose yesterday above a part of Myanmar’s biggest city here, which has turned into a battle zone, with burning barricades and security forces firing at unarmed anticoup protesters to enforce martial law.

Traumatised residents have fled the industrial neighbourhood here that has become one of the flashpoint sites in a nationwide uprising against the military’s coup nearly seven weeks ago.

The junta has increasingly deployed heavier force to quell the demonstrations, with more than 200 protesters reported to have been killed in the crackdown.

Sunday was the deadliest day since the coup, with a local monitoring group documenting more than 70 people killed, the bulk of them in the industrial Hlaing Tharyar township here.

The junta on Sunday imposed martial law on Hlaing Tharyar and later on other protest hotspot townships, effectively placing nearly two million people under complete control of military commanders.

Residents, many of them migrant workers, had since fled back to their home states, piling their belongs and families onto flat-bed trucks and the backs of motorbikes.

Hard-line anti-coup protesters had camped on a bridge leading into the township’s main roads on Tuesday evening, wearing hard hats, gas masks and carrying shields.

They had also erected barricades made out of tyres, wood, sandbags and bamboo poles.

Some of those barricades were burnt, leading to heavy black smoke rising above the mostly deserted streets.

Some protesters threw petrol bombs at the security forces, but otherwise appeared defenceless as they hid behind makeshift shields.

In a residential area of a neighbouring township, video footage verified by AFP showed volleys of gunfire going non-stop for roughly 15 seconds.