Residents in Myanmar claim that soldiers recently carried out a rampage through several villages, raping, beheading, and killing at least 17 people in the latest in what opposition to the country’s ruling military claims is a string of war crimes committed since the army took power two years ago.
According to anti-government rebels and a local who lost his wife, 17 bodies were found last week in the villages of Nyaung Yin and Tar Taing, also known as Tatai, in the Sagaing area of central Myanmar. They claimed that the military had taken the victims into custody, and that in some instances, the victims appeared to have been tortured before being killed.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military’s February 2021 seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi prompted nationwide peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The violence triggered widespread armed resistance, which has since turned into what some U.N. experts have characterized as a civil war.
The army has been conducting major offensives in the countryside, including burning villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. It has faced some of its toughest resistance in Sagaing, in Myanmar’s historic heartland.
According to local leaders of the pro-democracy People’s Defense Forces and independent Myanmar media, the troops involved in last week’s attacks were among a group of more than 90 who were delivered to the region by five helicopters on Feb. 23.
