An airstrike by Myanmar's military junta struck a shelter for internally displaced people in Hteelin village, Kachin State, on Thursday afternoon, killing 21 civilians and wounding 28 others, according to Colonel Naw Bu, spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The attack occurred west of Bhamo township, where the final phase of the junta's three-stage general election is scheduled for this weekend.
The strike is not an isolated act of violence but the latest data point in a documented pattern of the regime weaponizing airpower against civilian populations. As the junta loses territorial control to ethnic armed organizations and resistance forces, its increasing dependence on aerial bombardment reveals a fundamental strategic weakness: the inability to govern territory it can only reach from the sky.
Airstrikes as substitute for ground control
The timing and location of Thursday's attack illuminate the junta's operational priorities. Bhamo, a strategic city in northern Myanmar, has been under sustained assault by KIA forces seeking to capture the urban center. The military has responded with a defensive air campaign of extraordinary intensity—up to 50 airstrikes daily on KIA positions around the city, according to local monitoring groups.
Hteelin village, sheltering families displaced by this very fighting, became collateral in this aerial defense. The strike pattern suggests the junta prioritizes disrupting civilian life in contested areas over precision targeting of combatants. When ground forces cannot hold territory, airpower becomes both weapon and governance tool—a mechanism to render areas ungovernable by anyone, including the regime itself.
This operational reality reflects a broader shift documented by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which recorded the junta significantly expanding its air capabilities since 2021. As resistance forces gained battlefield successes through 2022 and 2023, the regime invested heavily in drones, attack helicopters, and even paramilitary paramotors. Air superiority has become the junta's last asymmetric advantage in a conflict where it has lost the initiative on the ground.
Members are reading: Analysis of how the junta weaponizes civilian casualties as political messaging in service of electoral legitimation strategy.
Regional failure and the limits of deterrence
The continued escalation of airstrikes against civilians also highlights the comprehensive failure of regional constraint mechanisms. ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus, agreed in April 2021, called for an immediate cessation of violence and constructive dialogue. Three years later, with thousands of civilians killed in airstrikes across the country, the consensus exists only as a monument to diplomatic impotence.
No meaningful consequences have followed the junta's systematic violations of international humanitarian law. The regime faces sanctions from Western nations but continues to source aviation fuel, spare parts, and weapons systems through regional networks and partnerships with Russia and China. Without enforcement mechanisms or unified regional pressure, the junta has faced no strategic cost for its air terror campaign.
The attack on Hteelin village will likely produce the same pattern of international response: statements of concern, documentation by human rights organizations, and no material change in the junta's calculations or capabilities. The cycle continues because the architecture of accountability remains absent.
Governance by negation
The Hteelin airstrike encapsulates the junta's governing logic in territories it cannot physically control: if the regime cannot provide security, services, or legitimacy, it will ensure no alternative authority can either. This is governance by negation—the systematic destruction of the conditions necessary for civilian life and political organization.
As the election proceeds this weekend in Bhamo township, vote totals will be reported, seats will be allocated, and the junta will claim democratic process. The 21 people killed on Thursday, displaced once by fighting and then struck while sheltering, represent the human cost of that political fiction. Their deaths are not a tragic byproduct of conflict but an integral component of how the regime now exercises power—through the altitude advantage of aircraft over populations it can terrorize but no longer govern.
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