Airstrike near Myanmar hospital leaves at least 30 people dead

Myanmar air strike hits hospital in Rakhine’s Mrauk-U, killing more than 30 as junta pushes pre-election offensive

A Myanmar military air strike on a general hospital in Mrauk-U killed more than 30 people on Wednesday evening, an on-site aid worker said, intensifying a pre-election offensive in Rakhine state where the Arakan Army holds near-total control. The AA’s health department said at least 10 patients were “killed on the spot” when the strike hit around 9 p.m.

The attack struck the main hospital in Mrauk-U, an ancient royal capital in western Myanmar near the Bangladesh border. The death toll could rise given the location and timing of the blast, according to local responders. Independent verification was not immediately possible.

The junta has increased air operations year-on-year since seizing power in a 2021 coup that ended a decade of tentative democratic opening, conflict monitors say. The military has scheduled polls beginning Dec. 28 and cast the vote as a path to stability, but armed groups have vowed to block any balloting in territory they control.

Rakhine is now controlled almost entirely by the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine force that fought the military long before the coup and has surged in strength since. The group is one of the most potent adversaries facing the junta, coordinating alongside other ethnic armies and pro-democracy fighters who took up arms after 2021.

The AA helped spearhead the “Three Brotherhood Alliance,” which dealt the military some of its heaviest battlefield losses since the coup. But while the alliance’s two other factions accepted Chinese-brokered truces this year, the AA has continued to press offensives in Rakhine and along key transport corridors.

Beijing has emerged as a key external backer of the election timetable, saying a vote could “restore social stability” in its strategically important neighbor. Rights monitors, the United Nations and opposition forces have widely criticized the planned polls as neither free nor credible in the current climate of war and repression.

In Rakhine, the AA now controls all but three of the state’s 17 townships, according to conflict-tracking groups, eroding the junta’s administrative reach and complicating any attempt to stage voting. The military has increasingly relied on air power and long-range artillery in response, as ground forces face manpower strains and conscription drives.

Strikes on medical facilities, schools and displacement sites have risen during the conflict, according to humanitarian groups. Wednesday’s hospital strike in Mrauk-U underscores the growing lethality of Myanmar’s air campaign and the vulnerability of civilians in contested areas ahead of the planned election.

The military has framed the vote as an off-ramp to fighting, but insurgent forces say elections under junta rule will entrench military power rather than end the war. With the AA refusing a truce and consolidating in Rakhine, the likelihood of ballot disruption across much of the state is high.

As emergency responders combed through the wreckage in Mrauk-U late Wednesday, the immediate priority was moving the wounded from a hospital that had become a battlefield. For residents in Rakhine, the air strike was another sign that the conflict is intensifying, not abating, as Dec. 28 approaches.

By Abdiwahab Ahmed

Axadle Times international–Monitoring.