Fighting continues to intensify in Karen (Kayin) State’s Myawaddy Township as junta troops and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) clashed for the sixth straight day on Monday, according to local sources and media reports.
The KNLA has ordered all seven brigades under its command to form what it called an “ultimate defence” force following military raids on the town of Lay Kay Kaw last week, the local news agency Salween Press reported on Monday.
Citing two high-ranking sources within the KNLA, the report said the decision was made during a recent meeting between leaders of the KNLA and its political wing, the Karen National Union (KNU).
Also involved in the clashes are members of the anti-regime People’s Defence Force (PDF), many of whom have been trained in territory under the control of the KNLA’s Brigade 6.
Public Voice Television, a media outlet operated by the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), which formed the PDF in May, claimed that the combined force of KNLA and PDF fighters had killed at least 68 junta troops, including command-level officers, since the fighting began.
The NUG also said that the joint force had captured eight regime soldiers and seized a stash of weapons and ammunition. Myanmar Now was unable to verify these reports.
Meanwhile, some 7,000 civilians from several villages located near the Thai-Myanmar border, including Lay Kay Kaw, Mae Htaw Tha Lay, Bei Hee Ka Law, and Htee Mei Wah Khee, have been forced to flee the fighting and junta raids.
About half of the displaced villagers have reportedly crossed the Moei River into Thailand. Photos taken near the river, which forms part of the border between Myanmar and Thailand, show long queues of people wading across to escape the fighting.
Thai authorities have been providing temporary shelters and medical assistance for the fleeing villagers, according to multiple sources who spoke to Myanmar Now from the border.
On Friday and Saturday, around 200 people returned to Myanmar with the assistance of the Thai authorities. Some, however, later came back to Thailand amid intensifying clashes, according to a source who is currently taking shelter on the Thai side.
“Over the past two days, some people returned [to Myanmar]. But yesterday some of them came back because there was heavy shelling. One was hurt by shrapnel and brought to a hospital by ambulance,” the source said on Sunday.
There are also around 2,000 displaced villagers in a temporary camp in Hpalu, a village tract on the Myanmar side of the border, according to a source at the camp.
The source—a 60-year-old former political prisoner—said that the situation remains unstable there, as fighting continues nearby.
“They are still fighting near Hpalu. The military is trying to take control of Lay Kay Kaw,” he said on Monday morning, adding that the clashes were more intense near the villages of Mae Htaw Tha Lay and Bei Hee Ka Law, which are located between Lay Kay Kaw and the town of Myawaddy.
Local media reported that fighting in these areas continued through most of the day on Sunday. In one widely circulated video, displaced villagers in Hpalu can be seen scattering amid the sounds of gunfire and artillery shelling.
By Sunday evening, the military’s heavy shelling in the area had forced an additional 1,000 people to flee to the Hpalu camp, according to a relief worker.
On Monday morning, as the military continued to fire artillery at the KNU’s administration office, two shells narrowly missed a group of children at the camp, according to a man whose five-year-old son sustained an injury to his chin.
“One of the shells exploded about 30 feet from where my son and some other kids were playing. My son’s chin was hit by a piece of shrapnel,” he said.
“We were lucky because it was a sandy area on the bank of the river. If it had hit hard ground, I can’t even imagine the damage it would have done. I was shaking with anger,” he said.
According to the NUG, the junta also flew fighter jets over the conflict area. On Monday, the KNU called on the United Nations to hold an emergency meeting to establish a no-fly zone over the Thai-Myanmar border to prevent the regime from carrying out airstrikes.
The KNU also called on the Thai government to continue assisting displaced people who enter the country, and to make arrangements for international humanitarian groups to meet with displaced people there.
Fighting initially broke out last Wednesday after a military raid on Lay Kay Kaw the day before, during which junta soldiers arrested some 30 people, including an MP from the civilian government that was ousted in a coup in February.
Established in 2015 for the repatriation of Karen refugees from Thailand as part of Myanmar’s now defunct peace process, Lay Kay Kaw has attracted many regime opponents in recent months.
The KNU said that 20 public sector workers taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement were among those arrested during the junta raids on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“The actions of the military council’s forces, such as entering Lay Kay Kaw and assaulting its inhabitants, are destroying the peace and violating human rights,” the KNU said in a statement released last week.
One woman who arrived in Lay Kay Kaw from Yangon in August said that the fighting caught many people off guard.
“When the fighting starts, people really begin to suffer. We didn’t prepare enough for it, including myself,” said the woman, a human rights activist who spent a month in Yangon’s Insein Prison in March.
As much as many may want to see a full-blown war between resistance forces and the junta’s army, they must be prepared for what will happen during such a war, she added.
For some, however, the price of war, no matter how steep, was one that would have to be paid.
“All I can do now is support those who are using arms to fight the junta. We will never depose the military by negotiation, but only by fighting,” said the former political prisoner now sheltering at the Hpalu camp.
Writing by Tin Htet Paing
Reporting by Maung Shwe Wah, Khin Nyein Chan and Nyein Swe
