Residents inspect damage at a primary school compound in Bon To village, Sagaing region, after a military paraglider attack killed at least 24 civilians during a Buddhist festival. Image credit: CNN
(The Post News) – At least 24 civilians, including children, were said to have been killed and more than 50 others injured when Myanmar’s military carried out a paraglider bomb attack on a crowd attending a Buddhist festival in the Sagaing region, witnesses and rights groups said Tuesday.
The rare aerial strike, reportedly executed with a motorized paraglider, was against a compound of a primary school in Bon To village, Chaung-U Township, where over 100 people had met to celebrate the Thadingyut full moon festival and to call for the release of political prisoners, among them jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
“The explosions took place within seconds, there was chaos. Children were also killed,” a local resistance activist who witnessed the attack and was injured in the blast alleged.
Two Bombs Dropped From a Paraglider
Witnesses alleged that the paraglider dropped two bombs at about 7:15 p.m. on Monday, killing at least 24 people immediately. Rescue efforts continued into Tuesday morning, with locals confirming that more victims were still missing.
The same paraglider reportedly returned at around 11 p.m. and dropped two more bombs, but there were no other fatalities.
Amnesty International termed the strike an unprovoked attack on civilians and classified it as a war crime that should be probed.
This attack must serve as a wake-up call that Myanmar civilians need to be protected urgently,” said Joe Freeman, Amnesty International researcher on Myanmar. “The victims and wounded are children, students, and community leaders.”.
The military junta had nothing to say about the attack. Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement armed group, People’s Defence Force (PDF), said they tailed the paraglider as he left the Monywa military command center, around 25 kilometres north of Bon To.
“There were no exchanges of fire or armed battles in the area. This was a premeditated attack against civilians,” a PDF official reported to BBC Burmese.
The exiled Myanmar National Unity Government (NUG) denounced the bombing as the junta unleashed “terror tactics” to suppress dissident voices ahead of due elections in December.
“The military is escalating bloodshed while imposing sham polls,” the NUG Ministry of Human Rights posted on social media.
Rights monitors estimate more than 7,300 civilians have been killed by security forces since the army seized power in February 2021, toppling Suu Kyi’s elected government.
The Sagaing region has become a focal point of anti-junta resistance, and attacks there have intensified as the military deploys drones, airstrikes, and paramotors to regain territory lost to rebel groups.
Foreign sanctions have starved the junta of its ability to supply jet fuel and combat planes, and it has had to rely more and more on paragliders in cheap air raids.
“Children were completely torn to pieces,” declared a local woman who helped coordinate the vigil. “We lit lamps for peace, and they bombed us.”
Myanmar Elections, Poverty and Growing Instability
Myanmar will hold its first post-coup national election in December 2025, a poll that will not be free or fair, experts comment. It is likely to be held only in territory held by the junta, and opposition political parties have been outlawed.
Around 76% of Myanmar’s population now lives below or near the poverty line, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), after millions were uprooted by ferocious fighting and a cataclysmic 7.7-magnitude earthquake this year.
“Elections under such circumstances would only formalize systematic human rights violations,” Freeman stated, urging ASEAN to “reconsider its failed policy on Myanmar’s junta.”.
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