A devastating explosion tore through a rebel-held village in Myanmar’s northern Shan State on Tuesday, killing at least 35 people and wounding scores more, according to local sources and humanitarian workers on the ground. The blast, which flattened wooden homes and left a crater 10 feet deep, has been blamed on a government airstrike, though the military junta has denied involvement.
Witnesses described a scene of utter carnage. “The ground shook. Then there was fire and screams,” said a man who gave only the name Kyaw, speaking by phone from a makeshift clinic. “Children were torn apart. We are digging bodies from the rubble.”
The village, which the junta has shelled repeatedly in recent weeks, lies in territory controlled by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), one of several ethnic armed groups fighting the military regime. The TNLA said the attack used a 500-pound bomb dropped from a jet, a claim the junta’s spokesman dismissed as “false propaganda”.
But satellite imagery reviewed by this correspondent shows fresh craters consistent with aerial bombardment in the area. And leaked internal documents from a regional humanitarian coordination unit, obtained by this newsroom, confirm “multiple casualties from explosive remnants of war” in the same coordinates.
Survivors are fleeing into the jungle, but roads are cut off by fighting and landmines. Medics are performing surgeries without anaesthetic. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has described the situation as “catastrophic”, noting that over 2 million people are already displaced across Myanmar since the 2021 coup.
Aid workers say the junta is deliberately blocking food and medical supplies to rebel zones. “This is a slow genocide,” said one coordinator who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They bomb, then starve the survivors.”
The blast comes days after the junta lost several key towns to resistance forces, raising fears of a bloody counter-offensive. The military has ramped up air raids, using Chinese-made fighter jets and Russian helicopter gunships, according to weapons experts.
“The junta is desperate,” said a former intelligence officer who tracks the conflict. “They can’t hold ground, so they bomb civilians. It’s their only play.”
The dead include 12 children, according to a local civil society group that tallied victims. The TNLA said it would file a complaint with the International Criminal Court, but few expect action from a paralysed UN Security Council.
In the village, as night fell, survivors lit candles and wept. “We have no homes, no families, no future,” Kyaw said. “They are killing us all.”
This is not a story that will fade. It is a pattern: bombs fall, bodies are counted, the world looks away. But here, in the mud and ash, the truth is burned into the earth.
