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 killed and injured dozens of people in an airstrike on Mrauk U hospital in Rakhine state. Credit: Facebook
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.
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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.