Singapore: Myanmar’s military killed at least 33 people, including patients and health workers, in what could be the deadliest airstrike on a hospital in almost five years of civil war, according to health and medical agencies.
More than 70 people are believed to have been injured in the same Wednesday-night attack in the township of Mrauk U, in the fiercely contested western state of Rakhine.
“The high number of casualties occurred because the hospital took a direct hit,” separatist Arakan Army (AA) spokesman Khine Thu Kha told Reuters. Images posted on social media, which could not be immediately verified, show the hospital complex destroyed.
Myanmar’s military junta has been fighting a disparate collection of armed groups for decades in some cases, but fighting broadened and intensified after February 2021, when the generals took power in a coup from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
In its efforts to take back swaths of the country lost to resistance forces and crush other pockets of dissent, the military has been using Chinese, Russian and Belarusian weaponry to attack both military and civilian targets, including hospitals.
The hit on the Mrauk U hospital was the 67th verified attack on healthcare in Myanmar this year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at least 33 people had been killed in the latest incident.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which was forced to suspend most of its operations in Rakhine state last year because of the escalating conflict, said the strikes appeared to be the deadliest on a hospital in Myanmar since the 2021 coup.
“It is difficult to convey how outraged MSF is by the attack on one of the few remaining functioning medical facilities in the area,” said Paul Brockmann, MSF’s operations manager for Myanmar, Bangladesh and Malaysia.
“Bombing of health facilities, patients being killed in their beds – this cannot be perceived as collateral damage in a conflict zone. Hospitals must remain a safe place for patients to receive medical care.”
An MSF statement said the dead and injured included elderly people, long-term care patients and children.
A junta spokesman did not respond to calls for comment.
The United Nations estimated in May that the military’s attacks since the 2021 coup had killed close to 7000 civilians, including more than 800 children.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a press conference this week that elections planned for December 28 and January 11 had been accompanied by new waves of acute insecurity, violence and repression.
The military also reportedly killed 18 people watching a football game inside a tea shop in the central region of Sagaing last Friday.
Few international observers believe the elections will be credible, rather viewing them as a means for the military to entrench power and achieve legitimacy under the guise of a democratic process.
Mrauk U township is controlled by the AA, one of Myanmar’s many ethnic armed organisations fighting the junta. The AA has been accused of its own atrocities during the conflict, most notably a drone strike massacre of hundreds of people from the persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority in August last year.
Zach Hope is South-East Asia correspondent. He is a former reporter at the Brisbane Times.Connect via email.
