NAYPAITAW, 06 August 2021, (TON): According to a spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) “a Myanmar military battalion fired light arms and heavy artillery at Kachin State’s Waingmaw Township for several hours, allegedly unprovoked.”

KIA information officer Col Naw Bu told media that the one-sided assault came from the junta’s Waingmaw-based LIB 58, and that it may have been a drill gone wrong.

He said “the military is known to practice drills. Maybe what happened yesterday was just a drill, and they started to get paranoid and shoot at each other.”

A 50-year-old Waingmaw elder said that artillery shelling was heard from around 7:30pm, and the sound of small arms and machine guns began at 9pm. 

He said “I couldn’t sleep for most of the night. My house was shaking because it is not far from the junta’s base that fired the weapons.”

Houses in Labang village, also near the LIB 58 base, were hit by both bullets and shells, a man who lives near the battalion told media on the condition of anonymity. He said that a large artillery shell hit a pig farm, killing some of the livestock.

At around 10pm, a military helicopter flew over Waingmaw three times during the heavy shooting, while tanks and armored vehicles circled the town, residents said.