Myanmar security forces kill over 90 civilians on Saturday

GBNEWS24 DESK//

More than 90 people across Myanmar have been killed by security forces in one of the bloodiest days of protests since a military coup last month, news reports and witnesses said.

The lethal crackdown came on Armed Forces Day. Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader, said during a parade in the capital, Naypyidaw, to mark the event that the military would protect the people and strive for democracy.

“This 76th Myanmar Armed Forces day will stay engraved as a day of terror and dishonour. The killing of unarmed civilians, including children, are indefensible acts,” the EU embassy in Yangon said on social media.

Former colonial power Britain also said that the security forces “have disgraced themselves by shooting unarmed civilians”.

Protesters against the February 1 military coup came out on the streets of Yangon, Mandalay and other towns, defying a warning that they could be shot “in the head and back”, while the country’s generals celebrated Armed Forces Day.

“Today is a day of shame for the armed forces,” Dr Sasa, a spokesman for CRPH, an anti-junta group set up by deposed lawmakers, told an online forum.

The deaths today, one of the bloodiest since the coup, would take the number of civilians reported killed to nearly 400. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in parts of Myanmar.

A boy reported by local media to be as young as five was among at least 13 people killed in Myanmar’s second city of Mandalay. The Myanmar Now news portal said 64 people had been killed in total across the country by 2.30pm local time.

Three people, including a man who plays in a local under-21 football team, were killed in a protest in the Insein district of Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon, a neighbour told Reuters.

“They are killing us like birds or chickens, even in our homes,” said Thu Ya Zaw in the central town of Myingyan, whereat least two protesters were killed. “We will keep protesting regardless… We must fight until the junta falls.”

Deaths were reported from the central Sagaing region, Lashioin the east, in the Bago region, near Yangon, and elsewhere. A one year-old baby was hit in the eye with a rubber bullet.

Meanwhile, one of Myanmar’s two dozen ethnic armed groups, the Karen National Union, said it had overrun an army post near the Thai border, killing 10 people – including a lieutenant colonel – and losing one of its own fighters.

Myanmar’s ethnic armed factions will not stand by and allow more killings, the leader of one of the main armed groups said.

A military spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment on the killings by security forces or the insurgent attack on its post.