The National Unity Government’s (NUG) Yangon Division Command launched attacks against 24 junta targets across the former capital on Tuesday, as Myanmar marked the anniversary of the military coup with a nationwide silent strike.
The attacks covered 11 townships including Sanchaung, Insein, Dala, Hlaing Tharyar and Hlegu, targeting an air force lieutenant colonel, soldiers, security posts, administration offices, CCTV controllers and regime informants with remotely detonated explosives, according to a statement from the command.
They were the latest in a wave of bombings and shootings across Yangon and the surrounding regions that the NUG has dubbed Operation Pyan Hlwar Aung.
There have now been 46 attacks, carried out in collaboration with guerrilla forces, as part of that operation in Yangon between January 22 and February 1.
A group called the Hlaing Tharyar Region Force said it detonated two bombs at a security outpost of Light Infantry Battalion 532 on the Yangon-Pathein highway in at 5am on Tuesday.
“I don’t think there were any fatalities… we left the area immediately after carrying out the attack,” a member of the group told Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
Attackers threw a grenade at the residence of the air force lieutenant colonel in Dala, also at around 5am. Yangon Division Command said the lieutenant colonel’s family members were “frightened” by the attack but did not offer further details.
In Hlegu, bombs went off at a ward administration office, an electricity office, a football field, a traffic junction, and a lottery shop owned by a man who was accused of helping junta forces trying to prevent Tuesday’s silent strike, a local woman said.
The man “forced sellers in the Hlegu market to sign a pledge” promising to keep their stores open on the day of the strike, the woman told Myanmar Now.
At the administration office in Hlegu’s Aung Minglar Ward, she added, a soldier kicked a parcel that had the words, “Touch if you dare to die” written on it and it exploded, injuring a man nearby.
A spokesperson for Yangon Division Command said the attacks were carefully planned so as “not to disrupt” the silent strike. “We wanted to show that public resistance is getting stronger even one year since the terrorist military seized power,” he said.
The military’s spokesperson did not respond to calls seeking comment on the attacks.
Operation Pyan Hlwar Aung was launched following the declaration of a “resistance war” by the NUG in September.
In November, the parallel government warned it would escalate attacks in Yangon, Bago, and Ayeyarwady regions after orchestrating a series of explosions.
