The remains of around 30 people, including women and children, were found in charred trucks on Saturday, December 25, in Burma, according to a rebel official and an NGO. After the publication in the morning on social networks of photos of the vehicles, members of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), an organization opposed to the military junta, went to the scene, on a road in the canton of Hpruso, in the state of Kayah (east). “We found burnt corpses in two trucks. We found 27 corpses.”an official said on condition of anonymity. Another witness said that “27 skulls” have been identified, “but there were other corpses in the truck, so charred that we could not count them.”
According to the Myanmar Witness Observatory, “35 people, including children and women, were burned and killed by the military on December 24 in Hpruso canton”.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said clashes erupted in Hpruso on Friday after soldiers tried to stop seven cars driving in the way. “suspicious”. They killed a number of people, the spokesperson told AFP, without giving details.
After this macabre discovery, the NGO Save the Children announced that two members of its staff had been “caught up in the incident” and were missing. “We have confirmation that their private vehicle was attacked and set on fire”the British children’s rights NGO said in a statement.
The two employees were returning home after a humanitarian mission in the region, according to Save the Children, adding that they had suspended activities in several regions. “We are horrified by the violence targeting innocent civilians and our humanitarian workers, helping millions of children in need in Burma.”, commented the leader of this British NGO, Inger Ashing.
In October, the NGO deplored the destruction of its offices in the city of Thantlang, in the west of the country, in a bombardment by the junta which had also razed dozens of houses after fighting with a local rebel group.
Burma has sunk into chaos since the February 1 putsch that ended a decade-long democratic transition. In ten months, more than 1,300 civilians were killed, according to a local NGO, the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP), which reports cases of torture and extra-judicial executions.