Five people, including two children at a monastic school, were killed when Myanmar’s military carried out airstrikes on a village in western Chin state, even as a new UN report warned the Southeast Asian nation’s human rights situation had “plummeted to a new low”.
The airstrikes at Sein Nyin Wa village in Paletwa township on Monday struck a monastery housing a primary school, injuring at least 17 people, including nine children, according to the Democratic Voice of Burma, which cited local authorities.
Seven of the injured were reported to be in critical condition, heightening fears that the death toll could climb.
Paletwa, located along the border with India almost 460km south of the Chin capital of Hakha, was seized by the Arakan Army, an ethnic rebel group fighting military rule and accused of human rights violations, in January 2024.
Images of the aftermath showed books and notebooks still open on desks and pencils and children’s belongings scattered in the rubble of the school whose roof and walls had collapsed.
open image in galleryThe Myanmar military did not comment on the strikes. It has previously claimed to have conducted limited airstrikes on military targets in response to violent seizures of towns and villages by insurgents and what it has described as terrorist groups.
The attack came as the UN Human Rights Office warned in a report covering June 2025 to May 2026 period that the military’s “persistent quest for control and legitimacy” had deepened the suffering of civilians.
The military seized power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a 2021 coup, marking the start of a brutal civil war as ethnic rebel groups picked up arms against the state. The war has left 8,075 civilians, including 1,074 children, dead, according to the UN, with 1,241 civilians killed in the past year alone. The true toll is likely to be considerably higher.
The report is based on remote monitoring, 80 interviews with victims, witnesses, lawyers, experts, and journalists as well as 24 consultations with the civil society in Myanmar.
open image in galleryThe report found that some 3.7 million people had been displaced since the coup and 30,508 arrested. However, the actual figures could be far higher, the report noted, as many either didn’t seek assistance or were not reported.
Nearly 12.4 million people were facing acute hunger, while 400,000 young children and mothers were suffering from acute malnutrition.
Not just Myanmar’s military but the Arakan Army, which controls much of Rakhine state, had indulged in systematic violations against the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority, including killings, torture, forced recruitment, forced labour, arbitrary detention, and displacement, the report said.
open image in galleryThe report also examined Myanmar’s first general election since the coup, which was conducted over three phases between December 2025 and January and installed junta leader Min Aung Hlaing as the president of the country.
The UN said the military-controlled process undermined the fundamental rights and freedoms necessary for credible elections and “exacerbated violence and political polarisation”.
Several parts of the country, including conflict-affected areas and communities such as the Rohingya, were excluded from voting, while opposition parties had been dissolved, or barred from participating and political leaders remained detained. Voters were pressured or threatened.
The report concluded that the election was likely designed to “entrench authoritarian rule rather than facilitate a transition to civilian government”.
open image in gallery“This report depicts a picture of suffering, misery, and cruelty on multiple levels and across the country that is heartbreaking,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.
He called on countries, companies and investors engaging with Myanmar’s government to introspect as their “own reputations and their credibility are on the line”.
He urged them to “undertake serious soul-searching with respect to their actions, or inaction; to ask: is this fair and just for the people of Myanmar? Can the societal and environmental harm of their activities even be reversed?”