Kachin forces strike two military bases and destroy a checkpoint during a series of overnight attacks.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) attacked three military bases in the Kachin State towns of Mogaung and Waingmaw overnight on Thursday, according to locals.
At around 10:30pm, the KIA’s Battalion 3 under Brigade 5 launched an assault on the junta’s Waingmaw-based Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 58.
Gunfire could be heard across Waingmaw town and subsided at around midnight, a man who lives near the LIB base told Myanmar Now.
The man said two civilians were wounded—one mortally—when the junta’s Myitkyina-based Northern Regional Command fired artillery shells at the area of the fighting.
“Two people were injured when heavy artillery shells fell on the bus station and the former company compound of the Kachin Entrepreneurs Association on the Waingmaw-Washawng Road. One of them later died,” the man said.
The deceased, 36-year-old Aung Le, was a company worker living in the compound where the artillery shells exploded. Details of the other person who was injured were not available at the time of reporting.
At around 3am on Friday, locals said the KIA ambushed the junta’s Maran Kahtaung military checkpoint between Mogaung and Kamine in Mohnyin District, subsequently destroying it.
The KIA also fired about 30 artillery shells at Base 3 of the Military Operations Command—known by the Burmese language acronym Sa Ka Kha—in Mogaung at around 3:30am, a resident said on the condition of anonymity.
“I don’t know where they were firing during the night. I could only hear the sound. I came to know only in the morning that they had attacked those places. Now, it is a bit quiet in the town,” the resident said.
Col Naw Bu, the KIA’s information officer, was contacted by Myanmar Now about the clashes in Mogaung and Waingmaw, but he had not responded at the time of reporting.
He did, however, confirm to Kachin State-based media outlets on Friday that fighting had taken place and there had been civilian casualties.
Around one hour after the Thursday night attack on LIB 58 in Waingmaw, the junta’s military bases west of the KIA headquarters in Laiza fired artillery shells around the Kachin stronghold, according to those local news reports.
At the time of publication, the military’s information ministry had not released any information about the KIA strikes.
On Thursday, the KIA also attacked two of the junta’s bases between Kutkai and Muse townships in northern Shan State.
Following the February 1 military coup, heavy fighting broke out between the KIA and the junta’s army in northern Shan State, and the fighting has also spread to Kachin State.
The KIA, in cooperation with local People’s Defence Forces, has also fought the junta’s troops in Kawlin, Katha and Htigyaing townships in upper Sagaing Region.
On Monday afternoon, the KIA intercepted and attacked seven naval vessels belonging to the junta on the Irrawaddy River near Shwegu in Kachin State.
Prior to the coup, the KIA was not among the ethnic armed organisations signatory to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government and military, but had engaged in preliminary peace talks with the National League for Democracy administration.
In February, following the military’s attempted seizure of power in Myanmar, the KIA announced that they would protect anti-coup protesters in Kachin State and welcomed the resistance movement.
source myanmar-now