At least 50 people were killed in an airstrike by the Burmese army on Tuesday morning against a group opposed to the military junta that rules the country. The attack was carried out in the city of Pazigyi, in the region of Sagaing, in the northwestern part of Myanmar, while the inauguration of an administrative office of an armed group (the People’s Defense Forces, in Italian) was taking place, which is fighting in different areas of the country against the regime. The information arriving is still fragmentary, but it seems that many of the dead are civilians.
A military junta has been in government in Myanmar for two years, which seized power with a coup d’état: on February 1, 2021, it arrested all the main leaders of the democratically oriented majority party – including political leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and established a dictatorship. In these two years, the military junta has restricted many freedoms, took control of the judicial system and violently repressed protests and demonstrations. In recent months, the Burmese army has carried out several attacks against rebel armed groups, also killing many civilians in those cases.
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