Yangon, Sept 21, (dpa/GNA) – At least 11 children are believed to have been killed, following an attack on a school carried out by Myanmar’s military junta last Friday, according to local media reports.
Eyewitnesses told dpa, that at least 20 other pupils had been injured in the attack, some seriously, after two helicopters fired on the school in the town of Tabayin, in Myanmar’s north-western Sagaing region.
UNICEF called for the “immediate and safe release” of some 15 children attending the school whose whereabouts remain unknown, stressing in a statement that “schools must be safe. Children must never be attacked.”
The military launched the airstrike in Tabayin, believing that the school was being used to harbour militant “extremists,” according to The Irrawaddy newspaper, which cited the military junta’s Ministry of Information.
“When the air attack started, the teachers asked the children to run under the table,” a local woman who had relatives in the class told dpa, adding that those who didn’t make it to safety in time “were killed and injured.”
Bo Kyar Gyi, the leader of one of Myanmar’s many militias fighting the military junta, told The Irrawaddy, “if they kill us I can accept it since we are fighting them. But they have murdered children at a school. It is unacceptable.”
Following the ousting, of the democratically-elected government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in a military coup in February 2021, Myanmar has been mired in chaos and violence.
GNA