Resistance fighters battle Myanmar’s military in Mandalay
By Hannah Beech
MANDALAY – Gunfire in the city of Mandalay began shortly after 7:00 a.m. Tuesday (22), as Buddhist monks paced the streets for alms and residents lined up for breakfasts of milk tea or noodle soup.
Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, has been a centre of anti-military resistance since the junta staged a coup Feb. 1. Dozens have been shot dead by security forces there. But the boom of heavy artillery so early in the morning was unusual.
The volleys of gunfire marked the first time that clashes erupted in a big city between the military and a newly formed militia, the People’s Defence Force, affiliated with Myanmar’s ousted elected leadership.
“We have started and declared war,” said Tun Tauk Naing, a spokesman for the People’s Defence Force in Mandalay.
The shootout began after soldiers from the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, raided a building where members of the civilian resistance were sheltering, according to accounts from both sides. A Tatmadaw television network said that explosives were being stored in the building.
Both the Tatmadaw and the People’s Defence Force claimed casualties on the opposing side and denied deaths among their forces. On pro-military social media accounts, users posted photos of a row of bloodied corpses, most stripped to their underwear. The dead were identified on a military television network as “terrorists” who had opposed the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself. Four were killed in battle, and four others died when their car crashed as it tried to escape the shootout, the military network said.
But members of the People’s Defence Force denied that any of their ranks had died and said that eight Tatmadaw soldiers had been killed.
As members of the Mandalay People’s Defence Force tried to melt into the neighbourhood Tuesday, Tatmadaw soldiers went from house to house, firing into gardens and at balconies, witnesses said.
Soldiers patrolled the entrances to three city hospitals, presumably to capture any wounded militia members who might be brought in for treatment.
In the west of the city Tuesday afternoon, semi-automatic gunfire again crackled. Unexplained explosions rocked at least four other parts of town.
The People’s Defence Force said that at least six of its members were arrested in Mandalay on Tuesday and that an unspecified number had been injured.
-New York Times