A coalition of resistance groups has said it killed at least 30 junta soldiers and injured several others last month during several ambushes against a supply convoy travelling between Magway Region and Chin State.
The convoy of 16 trucks and around 150 soldiers left the village of Laung Shey in Magway’s Saw Township on February 19 and travelled 33 miles to Kyin Dway village in the Chin township of Kanpetlet before returning to Magway.
But local resistance fighters attacked the convoy a total of six times on both its outward and return journeys, slowing its progress so that it took nine days to complete the trip.
“The military lost a great number of troops because we planned our attacks patiently,” said a spokesperson for the Kanpetlet branch of the Chinland Defence Force (CDF), one of four groups that attacked that convoy.
“We fired some great shots at them,” he added.
The convoy dropped soldiers and supplies in Kyin Dway before returning to Magway.
On February 28 it arrived at the village of Swae Lwae Kyin in Magway, which is about five miles from Laung Shey, according to the CDF. But before it got there it came under attack by People’s Defence Force (PDF) fighters near the village of Ma Sar Twi.
Ten junta soldiers died in that attack, the Kanpetlet CDF said in a statement. Junta troops piled the dead soldiers’ bodies inside a hut on a farm and set fire to the structure and the surrounding huts, a spokesperson for the PDF in Laung Shey said.
A second PDF chapter from Magway’s Saw Township and the Chin National Army also took part in the attacks.
As the military convoy approached the villages of Maw Chaung, Ma Sar Twi and New Hseng Dot, over 800 people there fled their homes, the Kanpetlet CDF said. On Sunday soldiers from the convoy burned down four homes in Maw Chaung, it added.
Other people fled their homes from the Magway Region villages of Swae Lwae Kyin, Nat Kaung Kyin and Yin Kae on Sunday, the Laung Shey PDF spokesperson said.
On March 1, the convoy left Swae Lwae Kyin for Laung Shey, he said, adding that junta soldiers took six residents of Swae Lwae Kyin hostage and used them as human shields to avoid being attacked again.
“I heard two of the abducted villagers were released but I haven’t heard anything about the others,” he said.
