Fighting between the Burmese military junta and opposition rebels has intensified in the city of Laukkai, near the border with China, after Beijing urged its citizens to leave the city. One of the biggest challenges facing the Burmese Army is the battle waged by militants with homemade bombs and drones, which has forced the withdrawal of troops on some fronts.
The Burmese Army, which carried out a coup d'état in February 2021, plunging the country into a deep crisis, has increased its air attacks throughout the city, media opposed to the military regime reported this Saturday.
A resident of Laukkai, which has remained practically deserted since the clashes began in November, told the Mizzima portal that the military troops bombed the city on Thursday night, in the northeastern Shan state, after throwing sheets asking the locals to flee. .
Most of the city is under the control of the Burma Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), one of the three guerrillas that launched an offensive on October 27 that represents the main challenge for the military junta since its uprising. "There are combats and air attacks throughout the city and the safety of those trapped is not guaranteed," the MNDAA said in a statement this Saturday, stating that the bombings "have caused a large number of innocent civilian victims."
The guerrilla asks the local population to leave the city and take shelter in safe areas, while it asks foreigners to contact the rebel troops to "help" them return to their countries, adding that they are collaborating with China in its campaign against cyber scam mafias.
Laukkai is known for hosting casinos and centers where victims of human trafficking are forced to carry out cyber scams, one of the reasons, in addition to fighting the Burmese Army, which alleged the Brotherhood Alliance, formed by the MNDAA, the Arakan Army (AA ) and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) to undertake the baptized "Operation 1027", due to its start date. The TNLA is one of several armed groups of Myanmar's ethnic minorities, many of which have fought the military for decades for autonomy and control of resources.
Among the methods used by the alliance of armed groups of Burmese ethnic minorities fighting against the junta are homemade aerial bombs, which they launch with drones. Specifically, he used 25,000 of these weapons in his recent offensive, as reported last month.
The wave of attacks with these types of bombs has marked a turning point in the war against the ruling junta. With these attacks, the fighters want to compete for dominance of the skies with the junta and its Russian and Chinese planes and helicopters. And it is the youngest, those of “generation Z” (born between approximately 1997 and 2010), who are in charge of the drone unit.
This is how it is in the People's Defense Forces (PDF), the armed wing of the Government of National Unity, a body that claims to be the legitimate government of Burma, and that is not part of the Brotherhood Alliance but that also fights against board. Its activities are mainly focused on Mandalay, further to the center, according to one of its members Soe Thuya Zaw.
The leader of Myanmar's military junta, Min Aung Hlaing, acknowledged that drone strikes had forced the army to withdraw on several fronts.
While Soe Thuya Zaw admits that its drones have a limited range, making each attack risky, they have hit a large number of targets in recent weeks. Operations carried out across Myanmar resulted in the ousting of the junta from its positions, the attack on airports and the assassination of a senior officer near the border with China.
The group has dropped hundreds of homemade bombs in Shan State in recent weeks, Soe Thuya Zaw says. His unit allied with ethnic minority armed groups in the region to carry out joint operations. Analysts say it is the biggest challenge Myanmar's military faces since it overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's democratically elected government in 2021.
China, which maintains a close relationship with the coup junta and historical ties with some of the guerrillas in conflict, has tried to mediate between the parties, but the ceasefire supposedly reached in mid-December was broken almost immediately.
Since the beginning of this offensive launched by the three guerrillas, the fighting - which had already been recorded since the coup - has spread to other areas of the north, west, center and south of the country, with the joining of more ethnic rebel groups and the pro-democratic patriotic defense forces.
The 2021 coup d'état put an end to a decade of democratic transition in Burma and the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, detained since the uprising, exacerbating the guerrilla war that the country has been experiencing for decades with the emergence of new anti-junta militias.
