Junta traffic police and armed plainclothes military personnel were manning a checkpoint along the road to Naypyitaw’s airport when two bombs exploded at the site on Tuesday morning at around 9am.
Several locals told Myanmar Now that the blast occurred while more than 30 military staff were present at the location in Lewe Township’s Bodi Kone village.
The site is located two miles from the Naypyitaw office of the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party and nine miles from the region’s airport. At least one of the explosions was heard five miles away in Dekkhina Thiri, a resident of the neighbouring township told Myanmar Now.
Members of a local resistance force—the name of which they would not reveal, citing security concerns—claimed responsibility for the bombing.
“One of their men was livestreaming the aftermath of the first explosion and we stumbled upon the link of that livestream. We detonated another bomb when we saw that they got close to it,” a fighter in the guerrilla group said.
“It’s safe to assume that we managed to inflict a lot of damage,” he added.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the number of casualties in the attack.
The livestream in question was shared on social media and showed that the windshield of a military truck was shattered in the first explosion.
A police telegram seen by Myanmar Now stated that the destroyed truck in question belonged to traffic police sergeant Kyaw Min Oo. It confirmed that the second explosion occurred while junta staff were reporting the first blast to military authorities and calling for support from a minesweeping team.
The member of the resistance force which perpetrated the attack said that it has been difficult for them to operate in Naypyitaw, which is the military’s administrative capital and remains almost entirely under junta control.
He said that more guerrilla attacks could be expected, but that the ambushes would be carried out “with great caution.”
“We carry out effective attacks that manage to frighten them even in a place like Naypyitaw,” he told Myanmar Now. “The entire public hates the dictatorship and that is who we are representing.”
