Over 100 junta troops surrendered after guerilla-style militias captured two of their camps in central Myanmar, a militia member informed Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.
The camps are situated between two townships in Sagaing area, the place anti-junta sentiment is excessive and indiscriminate assaults by the Myanmar army have been frequent because the military seized energy in 2021.
Seven mixed anti-junta armed teams, together with Paungbyin Folks’s Protection Drive and Homalin Folks’s Protection Drive, carried out the newest seize on Sunday.
A member of the militia stated the Folks’s Protection Forces now management the Chindwin river between two townships, strategic land that the junta used to focus on villages. The river was beforehand utilized by junta forces to move provides and gasoline additional assaults on villages located close by.
“These camps and battalions are related to Homalin and Paungbyin [townships]. Now, we are able to utterly management the waters of the Chindwin river,” he informed RFA, declining to be named for safety causes. “From that place, the army may assault villages in Paungbyin. However that space is now in our fingers.”
Some junta troopers have been trapped and later rescued by a Mi-17 helicopter from the junta air power base in Homalin, he added. The Folks’s Protection Drive seized Mild Infantry Battalions 396 and 370, in addition to taking 120 surrenderers prisoner out of the 300 junta troops current.
Troops stationed throughout Sagaing have steadily performed assaults throughout the area and have been accused of grotesque assaults and baseless arrests of civilians, together with girls and kids, folks with disabilities and the aged. Sagaing was additionally cited because the division with the highest fee of body-burning, a recurrent tactic by junta troops.
RFA contacted Sagaing area’s junta spokesperson Nyunt Win Aung concerning the bases’ seize, however he didn’t reply.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Taejun Kang.