(GNB Desk): Myanmar police have cracked down on anti-coup protesters using stun grenades, tear gas and firing into the air, killing at least six people in the bloodiest action since the military seized power four weeks ago.
Police opened fire in the southern town of Dawei, killing three and wounding several, politician Kyaw Min Htike told media. The deaths were verified by medics and reported by local media.
Officers were also seen shooting in the main city of Yangon. A man brought to a local hospital with a bullet wound died from his injury, according to a doctor. Myanmar’s Mizzima media outlet also reported the death.
Police were out in force early and opened fire in different parts of the biggest city of Yangon after stun grenades, tear gas, and shots in the air failed to break up crowds. Soldiers also reinforced police, local media reported.
Several wounded people were hauled away by fellow protesters, leaving bloody smears on pavements, media images showed. One man died after being brought to a hospital with a bullet in the chest, said a doctor to the media who asked not to be identified.
“Myanmar is like a battlefield,” the Buddhist-majority country’s first Catholic cardinal, Charles Maung Bo, said on Twitter.
Myanmar has been in chaos since the army seized power and detained elected government leader Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party leadership on February 1, alleging fraud in a November election her party won in a landslide.
“I decided to fight back as long as I can”, Kyaw Moe Tun told Reuters on Saturday.
State media announced Saturday that the junta had sacked the country’s United Nations envoy, who gave an impassioned plea for help on behalf of Myanmar’s ousted civilian government.
However, the United Nations does not officially recognize the junta as Myanmar’s new government as it has received no official notification of any change, said a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, and so Kyaw Moe Tun remains Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador, for now, Reuters reported.
“We have not received any communication concerning changes to the representation of Myanmar at the United Nations in New York,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said to Reuters.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, warned the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday that no country should recognize or legitimize the Myanmar junta.
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