Burma Army Attacks Boat, Killing Two Children In Paletwa

By Network Media Group
Friday, August 5, 2022

The Burma Army (BA) opened fire on a motorboat carrying students, killing two children as the watercraft was taking them home in Paletwa Township.

About 20 students were on their way back to Reemawa from their middle school in Tonmawa when local army soldiers fired with light and heavy weapons on 2 August as the student boat entered the Namadar (also Namatar) River, which connects to the larger Kalandan River.

A local source told NMG that a shell hit their boat. “The students have to go to school during armed clashes,” he said.

According to locals, Maung Ne Min Tun, 12 and in grade 5, and Maung Aung Than Myint, also the same age and in the same grade, were killed in the attack. Ma Khin Si, 14, Maung Aung Lin Win, 17, and Badu, 54, who works for the school, were wounded in the attack.

On the same day, clashes broke out in the area between the Arakan Army and BA, during which the regime’s Infantry Battalion 289 fired artillery at them and arrested four civilians from nearby villages. In the morning, AA also clashed with BA near mile post 40 in Maungdaw Township in northern Rakhine State.

The ethnic armed group has clashed multiple times with the junta in northern Rakhine State and southern Chin State, jeopardising an unofficial ceasefire with the army that started before the military coup.