The Kachin Independence Army shoots down a Burmese Army helicopter.
Political instability in Myanmar has also spilled over into a state of internal strife. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of Myanmar’s most powerful insurgent groups, said it shot down a Burmese military helicopter when the Burmese military returned fire following an air strike on their colony.
Kachin press spokesman Naw Bu said Monday that the Burmese army helicopter was shot down at around 10:20 a.m. in a village near Momauk township in Kachin State, Fighterjets World reported.
News websites MizzimaDaily and Kachinwaves, also reported photos of the downed helicopter.
Nabu said by phone, “The Tatmadaw started airstrikes on Kachin colony areas around 8 or 9 this morning (Tuesday), and they used jet fighters to bomb, followed by helicopter machine gun fire, so we returned fire to them.”
He declined to say what weapons shot down the helicopters, however.
Helicopter Shot Down Over Myanmar Village
However, the Burmese bombing also caused casualties among the Kachin, a resident who declined to be named said by phone, a church where many people were injured, including four who died in hospital.
The Kachin people are mostly Christian, not unlike the Buddhist-dominated Burmese.
The Burmese military staged a coup on Feb. 1. The reason for the military coup was that they disagreed with the results of last November’s election, and they determined that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) must have committed fraud, after which all civilian government officials below Aung San Suu Kyi were arrested, a move not supported by the public. More than 750 people have been killed.
Some of the persecuted people fled to the border ethnic communities for shelter, and the Kachin have taken in many of them, so what began as a political struggle in Burma has escalated into an ethnic civil war.
Burma has a large number of ethnic insurgents, including the Kachin, Kokang, and Shan states, with the Kachin being the most numerous and the largest in terms of territory. The Burmese military’s attacks on Kachin have been ongoing for several weeks now.
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