Junta under pressure as fierce fighting breaks out in northeastern Myanmar

Fighting resumes in Myanmar, challenging military regime as resistance forces target key areas in civil war.

New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered ceasefire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of three powerful militias that launched a surprise joint offensive last October, renewed its attacks on regime positions last week in the northeastern Shan State, which borders China, Laos, and Thailand, and the neighbouring Mandalay region with the support of local forces there.

Since then, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has joined in, and by Friday, combined forces from the two allied militias had reportedly encircled the strategically important city of Lashio, the headquarters of the regime’s northeastern military command.

‘Safety of people’

This is the next phase of October’s “1027” offensive, said Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the TNLA, which last week said the military provoked retaliation with artillery and airstrikes despite the cease-fire. “In phase two, our number one aim is the eradication of the military dictatorship, and number two is the protection and safety of local people,” she said.

Thet Swe, a spokesperson for the military regime, which seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, accused the militias of putting civilians in jeopardy by restarting the fighting. “As the TNLA are starting to violate the ceasefire, the Tatmadaw is protecting the lives and the property of the ethnic people,” he said in an email, referring to the military by its Burmese name.

There was no indication that the third ethnic armed organisation that makes up the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the powerful Arakan Army, has joined in the renewed fighting in Shan state.