Soldiers test a drone in Kayah state in 2023. Resistance forces are increasingly using unmanned flying vehicles to attack the regime’s generals. (Photo by Berry)
BANGKOK/YANGON — Senior generals of the Myanmar military have become the targets of drone attacks in recent days, reinforcing the impression that, together with the frontline retreat in a Thai border region, the military regime is on the defensive in clashes with anti-regime forces.
Vice Senior General Soe Win, the second-ranking officer in the military regime, was targeted by drone attacks carried out in the state of Mon, in the country’s south, on Monday and Tuesday. He was attending a meeting at a military facility when the building and a parked helicopter were damaged. The vice senior general was reportedly injured.
A source at the drone unit of the People’s Defense Forces affiliated with the National Unity Government — the parallel government led by ousted political leaders — told Nikkei Asia that two drones crashed into buildings at the facility on Monday and five drones rammed into buildings and a helicopter at the same facility on Tuesday.
The strikes followed an attack in the same state on Saturday, when a convoy of Gen. Mya Tun Oo, among the regime’s top five officers, was hit by a bomb dropped by a drone. According to a military source, a luxury van was damaged, but the general — also the country’s deputy prime minister as well as minister of transport and communications — was unharmed.
The Karen National Defence Organization, an ethnic minority armed group in Myanmar’s eastern Kayin State, hinted at its involvement with the attack on social media, and a KNDO source separately admitted to Nikkei its responsibility for the attack. The source said the armed forces had advanced notice of Mya Tun Oo’s and others’ planned inspection of the new airport in Mon.
These drone strikes were carried out days after over a dozen drones on April 4 attacked the military’s headquarters and a base in Naypyitaw. A state-run daily said those aircraft were exploded or intercepted by the military regime’s forces, and no facilities were damaged. But the private residence of military chief Min Aung Hlaing was reportedly in their sights.
The series of recent drone attacks underscores the strategic shift of anti-regime armed forces from expanding spheres of control in remote regions to striking at the center of the military regime’s governance.
The plains around Naypyitaw and Yangon are considered a disadvantage for the resistance forces. Although they are strong in mountainous guerrilla warfare, they are far inferior to the military in terms of heavy equipment such as tanks. The use of drones enables surprise attacks on the military regime’s facilities and key personnel.
Separately, photos shared on social media by the Karen National Union, a prominent anti-regime force, on Thursday show guns and ammunition draped with the flag of the Myanmar army’s 275th battalion, indicating the group’s surrender to resistance forces in Myawaddy, along the Thai border. The social media photos were posted after hundreds of Myanmar military personnel and their family members surrendered to the KNU, and after officials reportedly began evacuating over the weekend.
source : asia.nikkei