Features | Security | Southeast Asia

Living Under a Lethal Sky: Myanmar’s Arakan on Edge as Military Airstrikes on Civilians Grow

Airstrikes are no longer intermittent dangers as they were two years ago, but a constant hazard. They are part of the people’s daily lives, woven into their collective consciousness.

Residents of Yoe Ngu village in Myanmar’s Rakhine State search for bodies of their kin a day after an airstrike on the village, on Feb. 24, 2026.

The stench of burnt flesh and bones was nauseating even from a distance. Mutilated and burnt body parts lay strewn amid the ruins of bombed houses. Smoke billowed from what was once a thriving market selling a wide range of commodities and catering to the needs of three villages in the area.

When I arrived at the bombed site at Yoe Ngu village in Ponnagyun township of Myanmar’s Rakhine State at 7.30 p.m. on February 24, the atmosphere was unnerving. Aside from a small group of six men holding blazing torches and using sticks and shovels to rummage through the ash and charred heaps, the village was deserted.

The men were assembling the corpses and severed limbs at a spot on a road adjacent to the market. A man sprinkled water from a bucket where the fire was yet to be extinguished. Two women who had lost their relatives sat at a far corner of the market and wept uncontrollably.

“Let’s resume our work in the morning,” an elderly man shouted. “We will not be able to extricate anything more in the dark.” Bodies and body parts were loaded onto a handcart to be taken to the cemetery for burial.

Between 2 and 2:15 p.m. that day, the Myanmar military dropped two 500-pound bombs on a market in Yoe Ngu village. Some 17 people were killed on the spot and another 15 were injured. Among the dead were a 6-year-old girl, two teenagers, four women, and an unidentified charred body.

The injured were taken to the hospital in Mrauk U, located about 80 kilometers north of the village.  Among them were eight critical cases, including a 5-year-old girl, who survived but had her right leg amputated.  A middle-aged poultry farmer succumbed to injuries two days later.

There were only about a dozen people gathering the dead bodies or searching for their missing relatives at the bombed site. All the residents had relocated to different places within a radius of 1-2 km from the village, while many of them pitched tents in the open fields. They were terrified that more airstrikes would happen that night.

Nineteen families had erected makeshift thatches of bamboo and tarpaulin in the paddy fields about a hundred meters from the highway on the northern flank of the village. Among them were 32 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Sittwe, who were compelled to leave their villages early last year after continuous shelling by the military. They assumed they were safe in Yoe Ngu but were mistaken.

A family from Yoe Ngu that relocated to a place outside the village after the airstrike on February 24, 2026. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya

“We are back to the situation when we had to flee for our lives from Sittwe last year,” said Hla Thein Tun, whose sister died instantly after multiple splinters hit her head. “We don’t know for how long we can stay here.”

Another male IDP from Kyaukphyu was killed in the market and two sustained minor injuries.  They were among the 850-odd IDPs residing in the village with a population of about 2,500.

Until they can return to the village, the people must survive in the fields. They have to fetch food, water, and other essentials from the village. The misery is more for the elderly, children, and especially the sick people requiring greater attention and care.

“The saving grace is the ongoing winter season. The fields are dry and so there is less chance of us contracting diseases,” Than Tun, who was sitting outside the thatch in the fields with his seven family members, told me. “But then there might be airstrikes here as well.”

His fears were not misplaced. There was an aerial attack again about a mile from Yoe Ngu village on July 27, near an IDP camp, where a teenage girl sustained minor injuries.

Residents of Ye Yeo Pyin village in Ponnagyun township display shrapnel from air strikes. Photo by Rajeev Bhattacharyya.

Military’s Rationale For Increased Airstrikes

Major Myint Zaw Than, who defected from the military last year, told The Diplomat on February 25 in Rakhine State that airstrikes on the civilian population would increase in Rakhine’s liberated region in the coming months. The rationale for the escalation was the military’s need to defend the three townships of Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung that are still under its control, he explained. The rest of the 14 townships have been overtaken by the Arakan Army (AA).

Myint Zaw Than said that after the coup in 2021, when the resistance to the junta grew, the military upgraded its capabilities. “It uses suicide drones extensively now, which was absent five years ago. Surveillance has also improved,” he said.

Winning territory lost to the AA  has been among the top priorities of the military over the past year.

Earlier, while combating the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in other regions, the military had resorted to airstrikes to support ground offensives. Currently, in Rakhine and other regions that are largely under the control of the EAOs, aerial attacks are being used as a separate strategy.

Some academics and journalists in Rakhine State opine that airpower is being used to weaken the armed resistance, to impose sustained pressure on the civilian populace and to wrest political concessions. They fear that after the military launched its major multi-front counteroffensive codenamed Operation 4926 on September 4, spanning several townships in Rakhine and the contiguous regions of Magway and Ayeyarwady, more airstrikes could be expected.

According to a United Nations report, airstrikes were the leading cause of civilian casualties in Myanmar in 2025, with at least 982 deaths, including 232 children.  This was a 52 percent increase compared with casualties in 2024.

Figures from ISP-Myanmar’s Conflict & Security Tracker 2026 indicate that there were at least 222 aerial attacks in Rakhine between March 31 and August 31 this year, out of a total of 1,583 air strikes across the country. Magway was the worst hit with 322 strikes.

That airstrikes against civilians are escalating have also been noted by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which says that the increase is the result of the “tactics” employed by new military chief Ye Win Oo, who assumed charge in March, after which the military command was reconfigured.

A renewed offensive has begun in several border regions, including a frontier zone with rare earth deposits and vital trade arteries.  ACLED also said that as part of the new strategy, the military was regularly deploying “specialized groups of two to five jet fighters” hitting the same target repeatedly,

ACLED’s findings have been echoed in a report by the U.N.-established Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), which mentions the increasing use of low-cost aircraft such as motorized paragliders and gyrocopters in the attacks. The U.N. agency pointed out that civilian casualties are aggravated by the military’s growing use of “double-tap” aerial attacks in which a second strike follows the first, apparently “targeting first responders, people helping the wounded, and those trying to flee.”

Commenting on the increasing airstrikes, AA chief Twan Mrat Naing observed in an interview to The Diplomat on March 2 that “The military government wants to talk from a position of strength. But we will not succumb to such pressure.”

Airstrike on Mrauk U Hospital

Among the worst airstrikes on civilians in Rakhine State was the attack on Mrauk U Division Hospital on December 10, 2025, which killed 33 people and left 80 injured, including seven staff members. It was a 250-bed hospital, but only 140 patients were in the hospital at the time of the attack.

Among the injured staff members was Soe Naing Tun, who was at the entrance of an adjacent building and preparing to leave for home after completing his duties at the hospital. He witnessed the shells exploding and the ensuing sequence of events in the hospital.

“Both the strikes happened at 9:15 p.m. within seconds of each other. The first strike fell on the room adjacent to the verandah where all the patients were killed. Fortunately, the second hit the field in front.  For a few seconds, it seemed as if a volcano had erupted in the main building with a deafening roar,” Soe Naing Tun recalled. He added that most of the patients who either died or were injured hailed from the townships of Ponnagyun, Kyauktaw, and Mrauk U.

Soe Naing explained that the entire complex was dark and partially burning after the strikes. Then, “those who suffered minor or no injuries hobbled out of the hospital and some were carrying those who were either dead or critically injured. After about an hour, two dozen functionaries of AA’s political wing, United League of Arakan (ULA), and an NGO arrived with two vehicles and shifted the injured to another health center,” he recalled.

The operation to douse the flames, extract dead bodies, and check if any injured persons were lying in the debris continued till early morning. All the dead bodies, many of which were completely charred and unidentifiable, were lined up outside the building for relatives to identify. Two doctors checked the bodies to confirm that they were actually dead.

A doctor employed at the hospital, who was on leave on the day of the strike, was in no doubt about the reason for the attack. “This hospital is the biggest in the liberated zone of Arakan. Patients from far-off areas come here for treatment. The military assumed that many AA functionaries were admitted in the hospital,” he said,

The hospital also dispatches mobile health squads to remote areas that have neither roads nor transport facilities. Sick patients are diagnosed and given medicines. An air strike on the hospital would put an end to these services.

The tactic of striking on health facilities has been applied extensively by the military across all rebel........

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