(Reuters) -A 30-year-old protester was taking part in a gathering against Myanmar’s ruling junta on a festival day in the central region of Sagaing on Monday when he heard the distinctive noise of fan blades cutting through the air.
Minutes later, explosives were dropped by a motorised paraglider, also known as a paramotor.
“I was thrown away,” said the protester, asking not to be named for fear of retribution from the junta.
“Initially, I thought the whole lower part of my body had been severed. I touched it and I realized the legs are still there.”
At least 20 people were killed in the attack by the junta, according to the eyewitness, Amnesty International, the shadow National Unity Government and an armed resistance group in the area.
It is also the latest instance of Myanmar’s well-armed military using paramotors as part of its widening range of aerial weaponry, including aircraft and drones, deployed in an expanding civil war.
A spokesperson for Myanmar’s junta did not respond to calls seeking comment. The military has previously rejected accusations that it targets civilians.
The Southeast Asian nation has been gripped by protests and a nationwide armed rebellion since 2021 following the military’s ouster of an elected civilian government.
PARAMOTORS DEPLOYMENT ON THE RISE
The attack at Sagaing’s Chaung-U township took place just before 8 p.m. local time on Monday as local residents gathered in a field, said the eyewitness and a spokesman for a local anti-junta armed resistance group.
“The military has used paramotors to bomb this area approximately six times before this latest incident,” Ko Thant, an information officer for the Chaung-U Township People’s Defence Force, told Reuters.
The junta’s first recorded use of paramotors, which can seat up to three soldiers to drop bombs or fire at targets, was in December 2024 and they have since been deployed more widely, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
The military also used paramotors to carry out attacks in parts of Myanmar hit by a deadly earthquake in March, the United Nations said in April.
“Paramotors are typically deployed in areas of mixed control or where resistance groups have minimal equipment, such as lacking access to the 7.62 cartridges and weapons required to shoot them down,” ACLED Senior Analyst Su Mon said in a July report.
In some areas rebels have claimed to have shot down a junta paramotor, according to a statement issued by the Burma Revolution Rangers group in April.
With frontlines stretching from the northern Kachin hills to the western coastal state of Rakhine, the junta is increasingly relying on aerial power, with 1,134 airstrikes between January and May, far higher than corresponding figures of 197 and 640 in 2023 and 2024, according to ACLED.
In the aftermath of the strike in Chaung-U township, the 30-year-old protester said he crawled into a nearby ditch and hid there until his friends pulled him out.
“This is mass murder,” he said, referring to the junta’s attack. “They are committing it openly.”
(Reporting by Reuters staff, Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Hugh Lawson)
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