At least 29 people, including three monks, were killed at a monastery in Myanmar’s southern Shan State on Saturday when local rebel groups and a military-backed junta blamed each other for the massacre, Myanmar Now reports.
Photos posted online on Sunday show several bloodied bodies near the entrance of a monastery in the village, including three Buddhist monks.
The latest incident comes just weeks after the alleged killing of 17 Main villagers in the Sagging region earlier this month by junta soldiers.
Photos released by the anti-regime Karen Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) and independently verified by Myanmar Now clearly show gunshot wounds to the victims’ heads and other body parts.
A total of 22 bodies have since been dug up, with seven more still at the site, according to a KNDF spokesman, reports Myanmar Now. “There are still seven bodies behind the monastery that we have not yet been able to recover,” said the spokesman, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.
Meanwhile, Burma’s junta spokesman, Maj. Gen. Law Min Tun, dismissed the charges for which the army is responsible. In comments published Tuesday by the state-run Global Light of Myanmar newspaper, he blamed the violence at the monastery on “terrorist groups,” citing the Karen National Police (KNPF), the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and the Karen National Police Karen. Progressive Party (KNPP), the unification administration of the country’s ethnic groups.
At least 2,900 people have been killed and more than 17,500 arrested by junta forces in Myanmar since the coup, most of whom are in detention, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (LAPP). Since seizing power in a coup in 2021, military leader Min Aung Hlaing has thwarted the aspirations of the nation’s 55 million Southeast Asians to become a functioning democracy.
(With inputs from agencies)
Bodies lie scattered around the village monastery in Nanneint following a junta raid on March 11 (KNDP)
