Myanmar forces reportedly kill 25 in raid

Myanmar security forces killed at least 25 people on Friday in a confrontation with opponents of the military junta at a town in the center of the Southeast Asian nation, a resident and Myanmar-language media said Sunday.

A spokesman for the military did not respond to calls requesting comment on the violence at Depayin in the Sagaing region, about 300 km. north of the capital, Naypyidaw.

“Armed terrorists” had ambushed security forces patrolling there, killing one of them and wounding six, state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported. The attackers retreated after retaliation by the security forces, it said.

Myanmar has been plunged into chaos by the February 1 coup against elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with violence flaring in many parts of the country of more than 53 million people.

One resident of Depayin, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said four military trucks dropped off soldiers at the village early on Friday.

Youths from a local People’s Defense Force, formed to oppose the junta, took up positions to confront them. However, they only had makeshift weapons and were forced back by the security forces’ heavier firepower, the resident said.

A total of 25 bodies had been collected after the fighting, the resident said by telephone.

The BBC Burmese news site and Than Lwin Khet News carried similar accounts.

Reuters was not able to verify the details independently.

Eighteen members of the Depayin People’s

Defense Force had been killed and 11 wounded, it said on its Facebook page.

People’s Defense Forces have been founded by opponents of the junta in many parts of Myanmar, some of them in association with a National Unity Government that was set up underground as a rival to the military administration.

About two dozen ethnic armed groups have fought for decades in Myanmar’s borderlands, but Depayin is in the heartland of the ethnic Bamar majority, which also dominates the armed forces.

Violence since the coup has driven more than 230,000 people from their homes, the United Nations says. It also says more than 880 people have been killed by security forces since the coup and more than 5,200 are in detention. (Reuters)