Laiza massacre

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Laiza massacre
Part of Myanmar civil war (2021–present)
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Laiza
Laiza (Myanmar)
Location Laiza, Kachin State, Myanmar 24°45′14″N97°21′18″E / 24.7540°N 97.35505°E / 24.7540; 97.35505
DateOctober 9, 2023
11:30 pm MST
TargetKachin Independence Army flag.svg Kachin Independence Organization
Kachin Independence Army flag.svg Kachin Independence Army
Deaths29+ civilians killed
Injured57 injured
PerpetratorFlag of the Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) of Myanmar.svg  Tatmadaw

On October 9, 2023, the Myanmar military launched an artillery attack targeting an IDP camp near Laiza, a town in northern Myanmar that serves as the capital of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). In the massacre, [1] [2] over 29 civilians were killed and 57 were injured. [3] The incident occurred before the anniversary of the Myanmar Air Force's airstrike in Hpakant that killed at least 80 civilians and other KIO officials and soldiers on 23 October 2022. [4]

Contents

Prelude

The Myanmar civil war broke out in 2021 following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, in which the Tatmadaw deposed the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Minority rebel groups across the country, which had all been fighting low-level insurgencies against the government since Burmese independence in 1948, rebelled along with anti-junta civilian groups. One of the groups that rebelled was the Kachin Independence Army of Kachin State, which controlled the state capital of Laiza. [5] 400 people lived in Mung Lai Hkyet prior to the attack. [5]

Airstrike

The airstrike occurred at the Mung Lai Hkyet refugee camp in northern Laiza, at around 11:30 pm local time. [5] [6] Colonel Naw Bu, a spokesman for the KIA, stated that it is unknown how the attack was carried out, as the sound of a jet was not heard overhead prior to the attack. [5] Bu stated that in the attack, 29 people were killed, including 11 children under 16, along with 57 others injured. [5] Kachin Human Rights Watch gave a different toll, of 19 adults killed and 13 children killed. [5] The camp, which had around 100 households at the time of the attack, was "effectively destroyed." [7] Bu also stated that the search for missing individuals was continuing. [8] [3]

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References

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  2. étrangères, Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires. "Myanmar – France condemns the airstrike on an internally displaced persons camp in Laiza (10.10.23)". France Diplomacy – Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 2023-10-15.
  3. 1 2 "KIO ဌာနချုပ် လိုင်ဇာအနီး စစ်ကောင်စီလက်နက်ကြီးကျရောက်လို့ ‌ကလေးငယ်တွေအပါအဝင် သေဆုံးသူ ၂၉ ဦးရှိ". BBC Burmese. October 10, 2023.
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