Three junta columns have been terrorising several villages across Sagaing Region in the past week, setting fire to nearly 600 homes and killing at least five civilians, according to local sources.
The atrocities described by residents and eyewitnesses took place in Sagaing, Salingyi and Wetlet townships and involved advancing groups of 70 to 150 Myanmar army soldiers.
The notorious “Ogre Column”—made up of around 100 soldiers from the Meiktila-based Light Infantry Division 99—reportedly began an advance through Sagaing Township on April 21, torching some 450 homes in at least six villages along the eastern shore of the Mu River after entering through Myinmu Township, on the opposite side of the waterway.
During this most recent series of assaults, they are said to have beheaded a 44-year-old man named Tun Tun Win from the village of Ta Pa Yin Kwe village. His body was found on Monday, after the soldiers had withdrawn.
“The body and the head were placed 50 feet apart,” a resident of Ta Pa Yin Kwe told Myanmar Now. “The head was sitting on a tree stump. His penis was also cut off and put in his mouth. It was very barbaric.”
Tun Tun Win was reportedly interrogated about his village’s resistance team and tortured. His toenails and fingernails were pulled out, he was beaten, and a pair of scissors was “shoved up his nose” before he was ultimately killed for being “unable to answer the soldiers’ questions,” the local man said, citing another hostage who witnessed the abuse managed to escape.
The escapee identified the troops as belonging to the Ogre Column, who are believed to also have been responsible for the massacre of 17 locals in Tar Taing village, also in Sagaing Township, in early March. The same troops were accused by locals of beheading a resistance leader captured in battle later that month in Myaung Township.
Residents of Sagaing Township said that there had been no recent clashes between guerrilla forces and the military, and that they did not know why the Mu River villages in question had been targeted for destruction by the column.
According to a report released by the anti-junta Sagaing Township Information Department on Tuesday, the advancing army unit torched some 53 houses in Ta Pa Yin Kwe, where Tun Tun Win was from, as well as 288 in the village of Inn Sa, 49 in Mu Thar, 37 in Ywar Thit, 16 in Taung Myo and 10 in Taung Kyar.
As the soldiers left the area, heading southeast, they reportedly questioned displaced persons staying in makeshift camps, and took at least five civilians hostage. Their condition and whereabouts are unknown.
Another 150-soldier Myanmar Army column that crossed the Chindwin River from Monywa to Salingyi’s Nyaung Pin Gyi port on Tuesday morning shot and killed four men for unknown reasons as they headed towards the township’s administrative centre.
Three of the men, in their 20s, were from Monywa, and their identities were not confirmed at the time of reporting. They were believed to have been taken hostage, their bodies later found by locals at 1pm on a farm between the villages of Ma Gyi Tan and Hpaung Ka Tar, appearing to have been shot at close range.
The fourth man was a motorcyclist in his 30s, who was reportedly on his way to renew his driver’s licence.
“He was shot in the chest and died on the spot,” a local said, adding that the man’s body was found on the road between Shwe Hlay and Ton Ywar villages.
The junta unit that abducted the men is believed to be responsible for displacing residents of 12 villages along the road connecting Salingyi’s administrative centre with Nyaung Pin Gyi on the Chindwin. They were later seen near Salingyi town at 2pm, with two other men carrying their bags—believed to be forced porters and new hostages.
In a third township targeted by the military this week, Wetlet, a 70-soldier junta column retaliated after being attacked by allied resistance forces on Sunday, setting fire to more than 130 homes in the village of Aung Chan Thar and five residences in neighbouring Dint Te Kone after driving guerrilla groups away in a one-hour battle.
Nay Myo Aung, the leader of the Wetlet Township People’s Defence Force—one of the groups involved in the clash—claimed that the military suffered six casualties in the fight, with 17 soldiers wounded. Five of the bodies were found inside torched homes, he said, adding that several injured troops were seen being carried on stretchers as the military later exited the village.
Myanmar Now was unable to independently verify the casualties.
The weekend attack marked the second time that Aung Chan Thar, located three miles north of Wetlet town, had been a target of the military’s arson.
At the time of reporting, just 15 of the village’s original 250 homes were still standing, locals said.
