NAYPYITAW, 14 September 2021, (TON): , several residents have told media “soldiers torched 27 houses and killed two people during an assault on a Magway Region village that began early morning.”

The raid on Htei Hlaw, which is in Gangaw Township, began at around 4am, shortly after junta troops clashed with members of the local People’s Defence Force (PDF) in the village.

Junta soldiers injured three PDF fighters and killed another, locals said. Then at around 6am the soldiers began setting fire to houses, they added.

One Htei Law local “​​we can still see a lot of smoke coming from the village,”. Most of the village’s roughly 1,000 residents have fled and are now sheltering in the surrounding area.

“The losses are immeasurable,” the local added. “We had to leave all our belongings in our houses. We barely made it out alive, all our belongings were consumed by the fire.”

One man, 55-year-old Ba Win, refused to flee with the others and was shot in the head, a second Htei Hlaw resident said.

He “he got his brains blown out by the soldiers. He’s just a regular villager. He didn’t even do anything.”

Junta troops occupied the village until around 3pm. When some villagers returned to assess the situation afterwards, they found their livestock had been killed.