Four Students Injured in Airstrike on Kawkareik Township
Four young teenage students were injured in a junta airstrike that hit a school and a monastery in Kwileisu Village in Karen State’s Kawkareik Township at about 7:00 pm on 28 May.
The junta aircraft dropped two bombs, one onto a football field next to the Kwileisu Village School student dormitory and one on the village monastery compound.
Later that evening, a village resident said to KIC: “The aircraft made two bombing runs and dropped two bombs. One of them was a cluster type with many small explosives inside, though I can’t say the exact name. It’s still dark, so it’s hard to fully assess the damage. Four young teenagers were injured—one kid was hit by shrapnel in the thigh and is in serious condition, but the others are not critical. All of them live in the dormitory. The seriously injured child has already been sent to Thailand for medical treatment by villagers.”
Kwileisu Village is held by the Karen National Union (KNU) and the bombed school is managed by the KNU’s Karen Education and Culture Department (KEDC). Though the new academic year had yet to begin and the school was not yet officially open, half a dozen students were already living in the dormitory, according to the aforementioned villager.
After the airstrike the village’s inhabitants were too scared to stay and they all fled the village.
In the last few days the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), the armed wings of the KNU, have been gradually capturing junta military outposts along the Thailand-Myanmar border in the Thaybawboe area, about three miles north of Kwileisu Village.
