On the afternoon of September 16 last year, just before she went to school, nine-year-old Xin Niufu was overjoyed when her uncle gave her a new pair of sandals.
She made him a cup of coffee, put on his shoes and headed off to school, a 10-minute walk away in the central Myanmar village of Lat Aby Kon. A short time later, his uncle recalls, he saw two helicopters circling above the village. Suddenly they started firing.
Zin Nwe Phyo and her classmates had just arrived at school and were sitting with their teachers, when someone called out that a plane was coming their way.
As rockets and ammunition rained down on the school, they panicked and cried for help.
“We didn’t know what to do,” said one teacher, who was in the classroom when the airstrikes began. “At first I didn’t hear the helicopter, I heard bullets and bombs hitting the school grounds.”
Another teacher said, “Children inside the main building of the school were hit with weapons and ran outside trying to hide”. Along with her class she managed to hide behind a big tamarind tree.
“They shot through the walls of the school and hit the children,” said an eyewitness. “Flying fragments from the main building injured children in the next building. There were large holes in the ground floor.”
Their attackers were two Russian-made Mi-35 helicopter gunships, nicknamed the “flying tanks” or “crocodile” because of their formidable appearance and protective armor. They have a large array of weapons, including a powerful high-velocity cannon, and multiple rocket-firing pods, which are devastating to people, vehicles, and all but fortified buildings.
In the two years since Myanmar’s military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, such airstrikes have become a new and deadly tactic in a civil war that is now a brutal stalemate in much of the country. There is a hunt, which is organized by the Air Force. About 70 aircraft have been added in recent years, mostly Russian and Chinese-made.
It is difficult to estimate how many people have been killed in such airstrikes because much of Myanmar is now inaccessible, making the true toll of the conflict invisible to the outside world. JEE News spoke to eyewitnesses, villagers and families in a series of phone calls to find out how the school was attacked.
Eyewitnesses said the firing continued for about 30 minutes, shattering walls and ceilings.
Then the soldiers, who had landed in two other helicopters nearby, entered, some still firing, and ordered the survivors to get out and sit on the ground. They were warned not to look up or they would be killed. The soldiers started questioning them about the presence of any hostile forces in the village.
Three children were lying dead inside the main school building. One was Zin Nwe Phyo. Another was seven-year-old Su Yati Hlaing – she and her older sister were raised by their grandmother. His parents, like many in the region, had moved to Thailand in search of work. Others were badly injured, some missing limbs. Among them was seven-year-old Fon Ta Za, screaming in pain.
Soldiers used plastic bin liners to collect body parts. At least 12 injured children and teachers were loaded onto two army-run trucks and taken to a nearby hospital in Ye-U town. Two children later died. In fields near the village, a teenage boy and six adults were shot dead by soldiers.
