Let Yet Kone massacre

At a glance

Dates: From 2022.

Place: Myanmar.

Type: mass killing.

Deaths reported: 13.

What came before

Background Further information: 2021 Myanmar coup d'état and Myanmar civil war (2021–present) On 1 February 2021, the Myanmar Armed Forces staged a coup d'état and deposed the democratically elected government led by the National League for Democracy . Shortly thereafter, the military established a junta, the State Administration Council (SAC), and declared a national state of emergency. In response, civilians throughout the country staged large-scale protests to resist the military takeover. By May 2021,

Who was involved

Perpetrators The attack was carried out by Myanmar Air Force and Myanmar Army troops, including members of the 368th Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) under the command of the 10th Military Operations Command (MOC-10), which reports to Brigadier-General Thant Zin Oo. [ 1 ] Both armed forces branches are under the command of Min Aung Hlaing , who also heads the military junta, the State Administration Council . ^ "လက်ယက်ကုန်း ပစ်ခတ်မှုကို ခမရ ၃၆၈ တပ်ရင်း ကျူးလွန်ဟု NUG ဆို" . ဧရာဝတီ (in Burmese).

What happened

Incident On the afternoon of 16 September 2022, class was in session at a monastic school near Maha Dhammayanthi Monastery in Let Yet Kone. [ 1 ] The school teaches 250 students from kindergarten to the eighth grade, and serves Let Yet Kone and nearby villages. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Around 1 pm, two Russian-made Mi-35 helicopters launched an airstrike at the school, while Mi-17 helicopters led a ground attack. [ 1 ] The helicopters shelled the school grounds for 45 minutes,

Aftermath In the immediate aftermath of the attack, 50,000 nearby villagers living on the western bank of the Mu River fled their homes. [ 1 ] Army troops had secretly cremated victims' corpses at Ye-U cemetery, which is located 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from the village. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Villagers later uncovered the abandoned corpses of several victims, including that of a 13-year-old boy. [ 4 ]

The Let Yet Kone massacre was a mass killing of civilians on 16 September 2022, at a monastic school in the village of Let Yet Kone, near Tabayin in Sagaing Region, in north-western Myanmar. During the massacre, Myanmar Army and Myanmar Air Force troops killed at least 13 civilians, including 8 children. The event became one of Myanmar's deadliest civilian massacres involving children in 2022, during which 165 children were killed by military forces.