The regime’s forces murdered 3 civilians and burnt down 81 houses in two villages in Burma’s Sagaing Region.
According to a member of the Depayin People’s Defence Force PDF, on 19 April, a 100-strong column of the Burma Army (BA) killed two elderly women and burned down 17 houses in Mae Oeand tied up a youth and shot him in Nyaung Hla, where they burned down 64 houses. Nearly 5,000 villagers fled to safety when the column reached the villages in Depayin Township.
“Some people have returned to their homes after the BA column left, but many haven’t yet,” he said.
According to Data for Myanmar, the BA set fire to 5,617 houses in Sagaing Region between February and 13 April. As the regime has blocked the internet and phone services in many townships it’s difficult to gather information about the junta’s human rights abuses in the region.
In addition to the 346,600 civilians uprooted by Burma’s conflict before the coup, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 566,100 people were displaced between 1 February 2021 and 18 April, bringing the number of internally displaced people in the Southeast Asian country to nearly one million.
