The EU on Wednesday voiced shock at a deadly air strike on a school in central Myanmar, warning the ‘perpetrators must be held accountable for this atrocity’.
A Myanmar junta air strike on Monday killed 20 students and two teachers in the village of Oe Htein Kwin in the country’s Sagaing region, according to a school staff member, a local administrator, and other witnesses.
‘We are horrified over reports of a massacre in a village school in Sagaing,’ EU foreign affairs spokeswoman, Anitta Hipper, said on X.
‘Our deepest condolences to the families of the victims, most of them children.’
The strike took place during a purported truce — to ease aid after March’s devastating magnitude-7.7 quake — between the junta, which seized power in 2021, and guerrilla fighters.
Ko Min said he found his son and daughter’s bodies in the ruins of a schoolhouse in central Myanmar, moments after the deadly air strike that witnesses said came as a military jet circled the village.
‘One had no face and one’s body was cut. They were cuddling their books,’ the 43-year-old said.
‘My heart is broken. I value my children more than my own life.’
The junta denounced reports of the air strike as ‘fabricated news’.
But the aquamarine school building — where just under 300 pupils were enrolled — was shattered with the hallmarks of a blast as villagers roamed the site on Monday afternoon and Tuesday.
The corrugated roof was blown away with holes punched in the brickwork, an abandoned ball under pockmarked walls smeared with what appeared to be blood.
An exercise book lay open, showing geometry notes. Colourful unclaimed bags, some stuffed with blood-stained books, had been piled outside under a pole flying a Myanmar flag.
The community buried the victims on the same day as the air strike, scooping earth out of the hard-packed ground.
Over shrouded bodies, the children’s finest clothing had been draped on, and families wailed before onlookers covered the dead in earth with their bare hands.
‘The children are innocent. They cannot even hold their pen or pencils firmly,’ said Ko Min. ‘Why do they attack these children?’
Myanmar’s exiled self-declared ‘National Unity Government’ said the youngest victim was seven-years-old.
Myanmar has been riven by civil war since the military deposed the civilian leadership in 2021, with the junta suffering stinging losses to a myriad of anti-coup guerrillas and long-active ethnic armed groups.
Conflict monitors say the junta has turned to increasing air strikes with Russian-supplied jets as it struggles to fend off its opponents on the ground.
