Nighttime airstrike on hospital leaves 34 dead in Myanmar

Bangkok: An airstrike by Myanmar’s military destroyed a hospital in an area controlled by a leading rebel armed force, killing 34 patients and medical staff, according to a local rescue worker and independent media reports on Thursday.

About 80 other people were injured in the attack Wednesday night on the general hospital in Mrauk-U township, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army in the western state of Rakhine. The ruling military has not announced news of any attack in the area.

Wai Hun Aung, a senior official for rescue services in Rakhine, told The Associated Press that a jet fighter dropped two bombs at 9:13 pm with one hitting the hospital’s recovery ward and the other landing near the hospital’s main building.

He said he arrived at the hospital early Thursday to provide assistance and recorded the deaths of 17 women and 17 men. He said that most of the hospital building was destroyed by the bombs, and taxis and motorbikes near the hospital were also damaged.

Rakhine-based online media posted photos and videos showing damaged buildings and debris, including medical equipment.

The hospital has been the main source of health care for people in Rakhine, where most hospitals have closed because of Myanmar’s ongoing civil war, said Wai Hun Aung.

It was reopened after doctors gathered in Mrauk-U to provide much-needed medical services.

Mrauk-U, located 530 kilometres northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city, was captured by the Arakan Army in February last year. The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has seized a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships.

Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 7,40,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh. There is still ethnic tension between the Buddhist Rakhine and the Rohingya.

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, established by elected lawmakers who were barred from taking their seats in 2021, condemned the airstrike.

The organisation urged the international community to pressure the military to end its actions, take action against perpetrators and provide humanitarian assistance as soon as possible.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army took power in 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. Many opponents of military rule have since taken up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

The military government has stepped up airstrikes ahead of planned December 28 elections against the armed pro-democracy People’s Defence Force, which is closely associated with the National Unity Government.

Opponents of military rule charge that the polls will be neither free not fair, and are mainly an effort to legitimise the army retaining power.