Twenty-nine people killed, and dozens wounded in a military strike on a camp for displaced people in northern Myanmar, a spokesman for a rebel group that controls the area told. Myanmar’s junta has been accused of carrying out multiple bloody attacks on civilian targets as it struggles to quell resistance to its 2021 coup. The latest attack happened around 11:30 pm on Monday (1700 GMT), Colonel Naw Bu of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) told.

“We found 29 dead bodies including children and older people… 56 people were wounded,” he said, adding they were investigating what kind of strike had hit the camp. “We did not hear any aircraft,” he noted, saying they were looking into whether the military had used a drone to target the camp near the town of Laiza, on the Chinese border. Local media images purporting to show the aftermath of the strikes showed rescuers working by torchlight to recover bodies from wooden debris. At least 10 bodies were shown laid out on towels and tarpaulins on the ground.

Colonel Naw Bu said that 42 people were being treated at a hospital near Laiza. More than 10,000 people have been displaced in Kachin state since the military’s ousting of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. The coup sparked huge protests and a bloody crackdown on dissent that has seen tens of thousands arrested and more than 4,100 killed, according to local monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

 Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)