An air strike on a Buddhist monastery in central Myanmar killed 14 people and wounded 20, according to a local resistance group. The monastery is in Swel Le Oh village, Myaung township, in Sagaing region, about 75 kilometers west of Mandalay, and two bombs were dropped fifteen minutes apart on Friday.
More than 100 people were staying at the monastery for a weeklong Buddhist Lent retreat.
Who is saying what, and what cannot be checked
This needs stating before the details, because it governs how much weight the numbers can carry.
The toll comes from Nway Oo, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense and Security Organization of Myaung Township, and from a local villager who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press. Both are aligned with, or living under, the armed resistance. The BBC's Burmese service and local outlets reported a range of 10 to 14 deaths, which is a normal spread for an event of this kind in a place where nobody can safely count.
Three of the dead were women, and one villager said his mother-in-law was among them.
The military did not comment on the strike, and has previously said it attacks only legitimate targets. That is the entirety of the other side of the account, because there is no other side available. Myanmar restricts foreign journalists, cuts communications in conflict areas, and does not permit independent investigation of strikes. Nobody neutral will visit this monastery.
The honest position, then, is that a strike is reported by people with a stake in reporting it, and denied by nobody because the party accused has said nothing. Neither of those facts makes the account false. Both are reasons to attribute rather than assert.
Why a monastery
Myaung township is an area of armed resistance activity, which is the context in which the military's stated targeting policy has to be read.
Monasteries in Myanmar are not only religious buildings. They are the largest solid structures in many villages, and through decades of conflict they have served as shelters for people displaced by fighting. A retreat drawing more than a hundred people to one building is a normal event in the Buddhist calendar and also, in a war fought partly from the air, a concentration of civilians in a known location.
The war behind it
The conflict began after the military seized power in February 2021, annulling an election the National League for Democracy had won. Armed resistance formed across the country and has held territory in Sagaing and elsewhere ever since.
Those numbers are why this strike, if the account is accurate, is a routine event rather than an exceptional one. Air power is the military's main advantage over a resistance it cannot defeat on the ground, and strikes on villages, schools and religious buildings have been documented repeatedly through the war. It receives little international attention, and the practical reason is contained in this article: almost nothing about it can be independently confirmed.
