Reuters
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A 30-year-old demonstrator attending a rally against Myanmar’s ruling military junta during a festival day in the central city of Sagaing on Monday heard the distinct noise of fan blades cutting through the air.
Minutes later, an explosive charge was dropped from an electric paraglider, also known as a paramotor.
“I was abandoned,” said a protester, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the junta.
“At first I thought the whole lower body had been amputated. When I felt it, I realized the leg was still there.”
At least 20 people were killed in the junta’s attack, according to witnesses, Amnesty International, the shadow unity government and armed resistance groups in the region.
It is also the latest example of Myanmar’s well-armed military using paramotors as part of a wide range of aviation weapons, including planes and drones, deployed in the growing civil war.
A spokesperson for Myanmar’s military junta did not respond to calls seeking comment. The military has previously denied accusations that it targets civilians.
The Southeast Asian country has been hit by protests and a nationwide armed rebellion since 2021 after the military ousted the elected civilian government.
The attack in Sagaing’s Chaung Ou township occurred just before 8pm local time (9:30am ET) on Monday as locals were gathering in a field, witnesses and a spokesperson for a local anti-junta armed resistance group said.
“Prior to this incident, the military had used paramotors to bomb the area about six times,” Ko Thant, an intelligence officer with the Chaung-U District People’s Defense Forces, told Reuters.
The military regime’s first recorded use of paramotors, which can carry up to three soldiers to drop bombs and fire at targets, was in December 2024, according to the Military Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and paramotors have since been deployed more widely.
In April, the United Nations said the military had used paramotor attacks in parts of Myanmar where a deadly earthquake occurred in March.
“Paramotores are typically deployed in mixed-control areas or areas where resistance groups have minimal equipment, such as 7.62 rounds or other weapons needed to shoot them down,” ACLED senior analyst Sue Mong said in a July report.
A statement released in April by the Burma Revolutionary Rangers Group claimed that rebels in some areas shot down junta paramotors.
With the frontline stretching from the northern Kachin Hills to Rakhine state on the west coast, the junta has increased its reliance on air power, conducting 1,134 airstrikes from January to May, far higher than the corresponding figures of 197 and 640 in 2023 and 2024, ACLED said.
In the aftermath of the strike in Chaung Oo township, a 30-year-old protester said he crawled into a nearby ditch and hid there until his friends pulled him out.
“This is mass murder,” he said of the junta’s attack. “They’re openly committing it.”
