Myanmar military says armed groups used hospital it bombed, killing dozens

Witnesses astatine the infirmary and the UN accidental the onslaught killed medics, patients and whitethorn ‘amount to a warfare crime’.

Myanmar’s subject has acknowledged it conducted an air onslaught connected a hospital successful the occidental authorities of Rakhine that killed 33 people, whom it accused of being equipped members of absorption groups and their supporters, but not civilians.

Witnesses, assistance workers, rebel groups and the United Nations person said the victims were civilians astatine the hospital.

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In a connection published by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar paper connected Saturday, the military’s accusation bureau said equipped groups, including the taste Arakan Army and the People’s Defence Force, utilized the infirmary arsenic their base.

It said the subject carried retired indispensable information measures and launched a counterterrorism cognition against the wide infirmary successful Mrauk-U township connected Wednesday.

However, the United Nations connected Thursday condemned the attack connected the installation providing exigency care, obstetrics and surgical services successful the area, saying that it was portion of a broader signifier of strikes causing harm to civilians and civilian objects that are devastating communities crossed the country.

UN rights main Volker Turk condemned the attacks “in [the] strongest imaginable terms” and demanded an investigation. “Such attacks whitethorn magnitude to a warfare crime. I telephone for investigations and those liable to beryllium held to account. The warring indispensable halt now,” helium wrote connected X.

World Health Organization main Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said helium was “appalled”. “At slightest 33 radical person been killed … including wellness workers, patients and household members. Hospital infrastructure was severely damaged, with operating rooms and the main inpatient ward wholly destroyed,” helium wrote connected X.

Myanmar has been gripped by attritional warring successful a raging civilian war.

Mrauk-U, located 530km (326 miles) northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city, was captured by the Arakan Army successful February 2024.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed subject helping of the Rakhine taste number movement, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s cardinal government. It began its violative successful Rakhine successful November 2023 and has seized a strategically important determination service office and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships.

Rakhine, formerly known arsenic Arakan, was the tract of a brutal service counterinsurgency cognition successful 2017 that drove astir 740,000 Muslim-majority Rohingya to question information crossed the borderline successful Bangladesh. There is inactive taste hostility betwixt the Buddhist Rakhine and the Rohingya.

The Arakan Army pledged successful a connection connected Thursday to prosecute accountability for the aerial onslaught successful practice with planetary organisations to guarantee justness and instrumentality “strong and decisive action” against the military.

The subject authorities has stepped up aerial strikes up of planned December 28 elections. Opponents of subject regularisation complaint that the polls volition beryllium neither escaped nor just and are chiefly an effort to legitimise the service retaining power.

Myanmar has been successful turmoil since the service took powerfulness successful 2021, triggering wide fashionable opposition. Many opponents of subject regularisation person since taken up arms, and ample parts of the state are present embroiled successful conflict.