Fighters from a Myanmar ethnic armed group have seized another town on a strategic highway to China, the group and a resident said, in the latest setback for the embattled junta.
Northern Shan state has been rocked by fighting since June when an alliance of ethnic armed groups renewed an offensive against the military along the highway to China’s Yunnan province.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) captured the last remaining military base in the town of Hsipaw on Sunday after weeks of fighting, a spokesperson for the group told AFP on Monday.
“We took all army bases and there is no more Myanmar army in the town,” Lway Yay Oo said.
Hsipaw is normally home to around 20,000 people and sits on a highway from Myanmar’s second city Mandalay to the China border, along which hundreds of millions of dollars of trade travels annually.
TNLA fighters in green camouflage gear walked in single file on Tuesday past buildings whose walls were pockmarked with bullet holes, images showed.
Others sat in the trenches of a position recently taken from junta troops.
Corrugated steel sheets were strewn across the ground in another compound. Nearby was an intact shelter, made from sandbags, and a bare flagpole.
A uniform with the badge of a Myanmar military artillery unit was laid out in one building.
One Hsipaw resident, who did not want to be identified, told AFP that TNLA fighters had taken control of the town on Sunday.
“There is no more fighting in the town but we are afraid of (military) air strikes as we do not know when they will come,” he said.
Locals were currently allowed to enter and leave the town but many were yet to return, he said.
The junta, which seized power in a 2021 coup, has not commented on the fighting in Hsipaw and AFP was unable to confirm reports from the area, where internet access has been cut.
The TNLA’s Lway Yay Oo said 100 soldiers from the military had been “disarmed” since the group launched its attack in August but did not specify what had happened to them.
She also did not give details on TNLA or military casualties.
A handful of motorbikes were moving on one Hsipaw street and a handful of vendors sold food and petrol at the side of the road.
‘Three Brotherhood Alliance’
The TNLA is a member of the “Three Brotherhood Alliance”, which includes the Arakan Army (AA) and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).
The alliance launched an offensive across northern Shan state last October, seizing swaths of territory and dealing the military its biggest blow since it seized power in 2021.
A Beijing-brokered ceasefire halted clashes in January only for the alliance to resume attacks in June.
In August, the MNDAA seized the town of Lashio, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) along the highway from Hsipaw and home to a regional military command.
Lashio is the largest urban centre to fall to any of Myanmar’s myriad ethnic minority armed groups since the military first seized power in 1962.
Some have given shelter and training to opponents of the military’s 2021 coup that ousted the government of Aung San Suu Kyi and plunged the country into turmoil.
