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A Myanmar military airstrike struck a crowded market in the northern part of Rakhine state on Monday, killing at least 33 people and injuring 36 others, according to rescue officials and the Arakan army, the ethnic armed organisation that controls the area. The attack was described by a senior rescue official as one of the most severe airstrikes the predominantly Rohingya western province has endured since fighting between the army and resistance groups erupted more than three years ago.
The bombardment came shortly after midday local time, roughly 0530 GMT, when a fighter jet dropped two bombs in the vicinity of a market in the town of Kyauktaw, according to the Arakan army, which claimed responsibility for the accounts of the strike. Those killed were described as vendors, shoppers and pedestrians — a civilian toll consistent with the type of open-air commercial sites that have repeatedly been hit during the conflict. The rebel group cautioned that the number of fatalities was likely to rise as rescuers continued to work through the debris.
Wai Hun Aung, a senior rescue official in Rakhine, separately confirmed the strike's timing and casualty figures to The Associated Press. He noted that the market hit was the region's principal wholesale centre, attracting traders and buyers from across the state — a detail that suggests the strike's economic and humanitarian effects could be felt well beyond Kyauktaw itself, where traders typically stock up before travelling to smaller villages and neighbouring districts.
Images and video footage published on social media showed buildings burning, damaged vehicles and sections of a nearby bridge destroyed. The physical damage suggested a high-yield attack on a densely built commercial area rather than a narrowly targeted raid, and the burning structures pointed to potential secondary fires and further casualties in the surrounding residential neighbourhood.
Myanmar's military government did not immediately respond to the reports. In previous incidents, the junta has said it attacks only what it describes as legitimate military targets and has accused resistance movements of "terrorism" — language it has used to justify air attacks on civilian infrastructure during the ongoing civil war.
The violence in Rakhine forms part of a national conflict that began when the military seized power in a 2021 coup, ousting the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. A nationwide resistance movement has since hardened into a civil war pitting the military government against a patchwork of ethnic armed organisations and pro-democracy groups, several of which have built up sophisticated capabilities, including battlefield drones now used by both sides.
Politically, the airstrike comes amid a new phase of formalised military control. Min Aung Hlaing, the former chief of the military government, was elected by a military-backed parliament in April, a move analysts and observers have described as entrenching army leadership after five years of direct rule rather than opening a path to political accommodation.
On the ground, the Arakan army is one of the most capable forces arrayed against the government. A well-trained and well-armed organisation seeking autonomy for Rakhine's ethnic minority, it launched a major offensive in November 2023 and has since seized strategically significant military headquarters and large swathes of territory, controlling 14 of the state's 17 townships. The Kyauktaw strike occurred in territory held by the group, marking a continued escalation in the air war over areas the government has been unable to secure on the ground.
That escalation has direct economic consequences. The military has imposed severe restrictions on trade routes into Rakhine since the fighting intensified, and traders have reported chronic shortages of food and other essentials as supply convoys come under attack or interdiction. The destruction of a key wholesale market and part of a bridge compounds those difficulties for a population already reliant on informal trade networks.
The attack also echoes a strike in December on a hospital in Mrauk U township, which killed at least 33 people and wounded 70. The parallel death toll and the targeting of a market — a site of everyday civilian economic life rather than a military installation — underscore a pattern of attacks on facilities serving the population.
Humanitarian indicators remain dire. According to United Nations data, nearly half a million people have been displaced within Rakhine as a result of the fighting, most of them from communities uprooted by successive offensives and aerial bombardment. The UN also said in August that the human rights situation in Myanmar has plummeted "to a new low", citing brutal abuses against the Rohingya minority and the devastating consequences of illicit economic activity, including illegal mining for rare earth minerals.
The wider war has been extraordinarily lethal. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, more than 100,000 people have been killed since the coup, and the adoption of drones by both the government and the resistance has made it increasingly difficult for civilians to find safe corridors.
For residents of Kyauktaw and other towns under Arakan army control, Monday's strike underlined the absence of any meaningful buffer between them and the air war. With the army dismissing the area as a military target zone, the destruction of the market and bridge is likely to deepen both the food insecurity and the displacement already driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
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