Myanmar hospital airstrike kills 33 in latest assault on protected medical sites

The Myanmar military's airstrike on a hospital in western Rakhine State late Wednesday evening has killed at least 33 people and wounded more than 70, according to rebel forces, an on-site aid worker, and witness accounts. The bombing of Mrauk-U General Hospital—which was treating patients at the time—marks the latest in a documented pattern of attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Myanmar's civil war theaters as the ruling junta prepares for elections scheduled to begin December 28.

Bombs dropped by a military aircraft struck the facility around 9:00 p.m. local time on December 10, destroying at least one ward, cratering the hospital grounds, and leaving bodies shrouded in open air outside the damaged complex. Khine Thu Kha, spokesman for the Arakan Army—the ethnic armed group battling junta forces across Rakhine—confirmed the strike and casualty toll. Aid worker Wai Hun Aung, speaking from the scene, reported 31 dead and 68 injured in initial counts, warning the numbers would likely rise. Patients comprised at least ten of those killed on the spot, according to the Arakan Army's health department. A junta military spokesperson was unreachable for comment at the time of reporting.

Pattern of violence against healthcare

The Mrauk-U strike fits within a broader, meticulously documented escalation of attacks on medical facilities and personnel since Myanmar's February 2021 coup. In Myanmar, Insecurity Insight data shows that the Myanmar Armed Forces have been responsible for the majority of incidents involving explosive weapons causing harm to civilians between February 2021 and August 2024, with almost three-quarters of incidents where health facilities were damaged or destroyed attributed to the military using drone and plane-delivered explosives, missiles, and shelling.

Human Rights Watch's 2025 World Report describes the junta's "scorched-earth tactics," including indiscriminate and deliberate air and artillery strikes on schools, hospitals, religious sites, and displacement camps—a pattern the organization categorizes as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International has verified multiple lethal airstrikes on civilian sites in recent years: a January 2024 church bombing in Kanan village that killed 17 people including nine children, and an October 2023 strike on a Kachin State displacement camp that killed 28, including twelve children.

The timing of the Mrauk-U attack aligns with a broader intensification of junta airpower deployment ahead of the December 28 polls. Earlier this month, Crisis Zone documented an airstrike on a tea shop in Sagaing Region that killed 18 civilians—part of what conflict analysts describe as a deliberate strategy to project force and deny territory in areas where the military has lost effective ground control.

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Accountability prospects and election trajectory

The immediate trajectory hinges on whether the December 28 election timeline accelerates the air campaign's intensity. Rebel groups including the Arakan Army have vowed to disrupt polling in territories they control, setting up a collision between the junta's electoral legitimacy project and the operational reality of territorial losses across multiple fronts. Each additional strike on civilian infrastructure in the run-up to voting deepens the international isolation that already constrains the regime's diplomatic options, yet the military's strategic calculus appears premised on the assumption that airpower can substitute for absent ground presence.

Advocacy organizations including Amnesty International have renewed calls for international jet-fuel supply suspensions and referral of Myanmar to the International Criminal Court. While the ICC's jurisdiction remains contested by the junta, the accumulation of documented attacks on protected sites strengthens the evidentiary basis for future accountability mechanisms. More immediately, the humanitarian access implications are severe: any further tightening of blockades in Rakhine risks triggering cross-border displacement toward already-overstretched refugee camps in Bangladesh.

The Mrauk-U hospital now joins a lengthening list of civilian sites bombed by Myanmar's military in an election season defined by aerial violence against populations beyond the junta's territorial reach. Whether this strategy secures the regime's political objectives or accelerates its international pariah status will become clearer in the weeks ahead.