This Incident Report describes an event occurred in Kaw T’Ree (Kawkareik) Township, Dooplaya District. On March 20th 2024, an air strike was conducted by the State Administration Council (SAC) onto G--- village, Noh Poe village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township, killing one villager and injuring three. Saw A--- was travelling with his infant when an aircraft flew over them in G--- village. After hearing the sound of aircraft a second time, he got his child to safety with his wife in a bunker, but he was fatally hit by the air strike. Saw A--- was sent to a local clinic, located in B--- village, P’Lu village tract, by local authorities, but passed away en route. Saw A--- was survived by his wife and three children. The air strike also injured three women and destroyed five houses, one elementary school, one middle school, and one animist temple.[1]

 

 

Part 1 – Incident Details

Type of Incident

Air strike by fighter jet [causing civilian casualties]

Date of Incident(s)

March 20th 2024

Incident Location

(Village, Township and District)

G--- village, Noh Poe village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township, Dooplaya District

Victim(s) Information

    

Name

Saw[2] A---

Naw[3] E---

Unknown

 Naw H--- Naw J---

Age

41 years old

42 years old

Unknown

 Unknown Unknown

Gender

Man

Woman

Woman

 Women Women

Ethnicity

Karen

Karen

Unknown

 Karen Karen

Marital Status  

Married

Married

Unknown

 Unknown Married

Occupation

Farmer

Seller

Unknown

 Unknown Unknown

Religion

Buddhist

Buddhist

Unknown

 Unknown Unknown

Position

Villager

Villager

Villager

 Villager Villager

Village

G--- village, Noh Poe village tract[4], Kaw T’Ree Township, Dooplaya District

G--- village, Noh Poe village tract

G--- village, Noh Poe village tract

 G--- village, Noh Poe village tract G--- village, Noh Poe village tract

Perpetrator Information (Armed Actors)

Name(s)           

Rank

Unit

Base

Commander’s Name

N/A

N/A

Burma [State Administration Council (SAC)[5]] Air Force

N/A

[Htun Aung serves as the Commander-in-Chief of the Burma (SAC) Air Force]

 

Part 2 - Information Quality

1. Explain in detail how this information was collected.

A Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)[6] soldier informed [a KHRG researcher] about the incident. The KHRG researcher went to the incident place and interviewed G--- villagers. After that, he met with the village head. The village head showed him the areas destroyed by the air strike, [including] five houses, one middle school and one elementary school. The KHRG researcher conducted interviews with the village head, [a family member of the deceased victim,] a victim of [injury due to] the incident, and [other] local villagers.

2. Explain how the source verified this information.

[KHRG field researcher] conducted interviews [separately] with (i) Saw C---, the brother of Saw A---; (ii) Saw D---, the village head of G--- village; and (iii) Naw E---, who was injured by the shrapnel [from air strike]. 

 

Part 3 – Complete Description of the Incident

Describe the Incident(s) in complete detail.

On March 20th 2024, in the evening, an air strike was conducted on G--- village, Noh Poe village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township. When Saw A--- had finished showering, it was around 5 pm. Saw A---’s four-month-old son was unwell, so Saw A--- rode his bike to take his child to a [local] medical nurse who lived in the same village [around 200 meters away from his home]. His wife, Naw F---, had given birth four months prior so she did not accompany her husband. When Saw A--- reached half-way [to the nurse’s house], he heard the sound of an aircraft flying across the sky, so he stopped his bike, hid in a covered place and watched the aircraft pass over him [, as witnessed by a local villager named Naw E---].

 

After, he met with the medic nurse and did the checkup for his son, Saw A--- visited Naw E--- [a villager from G--- village,] at her house [around 40 meters from the local nurse’s house]. As Saw A--- was eating betel nut [at Naw E---’s house], he heard the sound of an aircraft once again, around 15 minutes after the first aircraft. This time, the aircraft sounded like it was dipping down. In fear, he rushed to bring his son to safety with his wife.

 

As soon as he reached his wife, Naw F---, she went inside the [underground] bunker. While they [mother and three children] were in the bunker, Saw A--- was [outside] searching to see where the aircraft was. He saw the SAC fighter jet drop a bomb, so he tried to flee to a covered place, but he could not reach safety. The bomb landed beside him and his body was propelled by the force of the explosion. He was found lying next to a house, injured all over. Saw A--- was taken to a KNLA-run clinic in B--- village [also known as B--- clinic], P’Lu village tract, Kaw T’Ree Township, by the Cobra Column[7] security in Dooplaya District, but he died on the way. His wife became a widow with three children. [At the time of the incident,] his eldest child was 9 years old, middle child was 5 years old, and the youngest was 4 months old.

 

The bomb also injured three women, including Naw E--- [who Saw A--- had visited], as reported by Saw A---’s brother named Saw C---. Naw E--- was minorly injured on her face. For the other two elderly women, Naw H--- was injured severely on her stomach and Naw J--- was injured on her ear. The injured villagers were sent to B--- clinic with Saw A---.

 

The air strike also destroyed five villagers’ houses, an elementary school located inside a church compound, an animist temple, one middle school located near a football ground, a rice barn, and one toilet in G--- village. 

 

Part 4 - Permission for Using the Details

Did the victim(s) provide permission to use this information? Explain how that permission was provided.

The interviewees gave permission for this information to be used by KHRG.

 

 

 

                    

Further background reading on the impacts relating to air strikes in Southeast Burma/Myanmar can be found in the following KHRG reports:

 
Fri, 30 Aug 2024

Footnotes: 

[1] The present document is based on information received in May 2024. It was provided by a community member in Dooplaya District who has been trained by KHRG to monitor human rights conditions on the ground. The names of the victims, their photos and the exact locations are censored for security reasons. The parts in square brackets are explanations added by KHRG.

[2] ‘Saw’ is a S’gaw Karen male honorific title used before a person’s name.

[3] ‘Naw’ is a S’gaw Karen female honorific title used before a person’s name.

[4] A village tract is an administrative unit of between five and 20 villages in a local area, often centered on a large village.

[5] The State Administration Council (SAC) is the executive governing body created in the aftermath of the February 1st 2021 military coup. It was established by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on February 2nd 2021, and is composed of eight military officers and eight civilians. The chairperson serves as the de facto head of government of Burma/Myanmar and leads the Military Cabinet of Myanmar, the executive branch of the government. Min Aung Hlaing assumed the role of SAC chairperson following the coup.

[6] The Karen National Liberation Army is the armed wing of the Karen National Union.

[7] The Cobra Column is one of eight armed resistance forces that have emerged since March 2022 under the joint command of the Karen National Liberation Army (LNLA) and the People’s Defence Force (PDF). The Cobra Column operates largely under KNLA Company #1, Battalion #27.

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ဖးအါထီၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဘၣ်ထွဲတဖၣ်

ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- SAC ကဘီယူဒုးသုးခးလီၤတၢ် ဘၣ်သံဝဲ သဝီဖိ (၁) ဂၤ, ဘၣ်ဒိ (၃) ဂၤ ဒီးဘၣ်ဟးဂီၤဝဲဟံၣ်တဖၣ် ဒီး ကၠိ (၂) ဖျၢၣ် ဖဲကီးတရံးကီၢ်ဆၣ်ပူၤ, လါမးရှး ၂၀၂၄ နံၣ်.
ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ကဲထီၣ်သးတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါ- SAC သုးဖိတဖၣ်မၤသံသ၀ီဖိ (၅) ဂၤ, မၤဆါပယွဲသ၀ီဖိ (၂) ဂၤ ဒီးမၤတရီတပါဝဲ ပှၤမိၢ်ဒၢတဂၤ ဖဲကီးတရံးကီၢ်ဆၣ်, လါမ့ၤ ၂၀၂၄ နံၣ်