Residents of hunger-racked Myanmar region say junta air strike kills 12

A rebel soldier with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army rests in a camp in the Kokang region of Myanmar on March 10, 2015. (AP Photo)

A Myanmar junta air strike on a rebel-held town in the country’s hunger-ravaged west killed at least 12 people, witnesses of the overnight bombing said on Tuesday.

Rakhine state has been blockaded by Myanmar’s military as it battles ethnic fighters in a many-sided civil war that has consumed the country since the junta toppled the democratic government in a 2021 coup.

Agriculture has withered and hyperinflation has spread, with suffering exacerbated by U.S.-led aid cuts. The United Nations warned this month of a “dramatic rise in hunger”.

A junta spokesman could not be reached for comment on the air strike, which residents said hit the northern town of Mrauk U around 11:00 pm (1630 GMT) on Monday.

Maung Than Chay said the 12 fatalities included three of his grandchildren, who were buried in the wreckage of his home and those of his neighbours destroyed by two bombs.

“It is terrible -- like the end of my life,” he said. “I have lost everything.”

“I have no food to eat, no place to stay, no pots to cook, no money to buy, because everything has been destroyed,” he said.

“I don’t know how to express my anger.”

At least 10 bodies were laid out in public on Tuesday, some draped in their finest or favourite clothing as funeral outfits.

Mourners keened in grief, dabbed the faces of bodies and clutched photo portraits.

The junta controls only three out of the 17 townships in coastal Rakhine, where it is battling to claw back ground ahead of a disputed election it plans to start in territories it controls in December.

“We are devastated. I would like to ask them why they are torturing us,” said Mrauk U resident Khin Khin Win, who also put the death toll at 12.

“We have nothing in our hands,” she said. “The dead are completely lost for nothing.”

Local ethnic armed organisation the Arakan Army (AA) has pledged to block the junta’s election -- due to start in phases from December 28 -- from enclaves under its control.

AA spokesman Khaing Thu Kha said those killed included five children, with 20 more people wounded.

Both the military and the AA have been accused of atrocities in Rakhine, where around 20 per cent of the population has been displaced by the war.

The UN says 57 per cent of families in the centre of the state are unable to meet basic food needs, up from 33 per cent since December, with the situation likely “much worse” in other less accessible areas.