Ethnic Army Alliance Kills 14 Myanmar Police in Dawn Raid as Death Toll Mounts in Bago

Three ethnic armed groups that support Myanmar’s anti-junta protest movement killed 14 police officers and burned their station to the ground in a dawn raid on Saturday in northern Shan state, witnesses told RFA.

The slain policemen included the chief of the Naungmon police station south of Lashio, the largest city in northern Shan state, a region near the border with China where ethnic fighters have been in conflict with the Myanmar military for decades.

“Fourteen policemen, including the patrol station chief, were killed, and seven others were injured,” said an aid worker who spoke to RFA’s Burmese Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The entire police station was burned down. The officers’ families are sheltering in local monastery, and all dead bodies are now at Lashio military hospital,” said the relief worker, who helped retrieve the bodies of the dead patrolmen.

“They were lying dead here and there in the compound, and we had to collect the bodies and prepare them for transport to Lashio,” he added.

The attack was launched at dawn by the Three Brotherhood Alliance of the Arakan Army (AA), the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a local resident said.

Full story: rfa.org

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Paul Eckert.