Myanmar airstrikes indiscriminately target civilians a rights group says in a new report

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s military has consistently targeted civilians and their communities as a form of collective punishment in the country’s southeast since the army seized power in early 2021, a rights group said in a report released Friday. Documented airstrikes on villages examined by researchers from the Karen Human Rights Group based in Myanmar’s southeast, are emblematic of a broader assault on civilians across the war-torn nation, said James Rodehaver, the Bangkok-based chief of the Myanmar team of the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Rights organizations and United Nations investigators have found evidence that security forces indiscriminately and disproportionately target civilians with bombs, mass executions of people detained during operations and large-scale burning of civilian houses. The Karen Human Rights Group identified 227 airstrikes on villages, schools and medical facilities in seven districts in the country’s southeast where guerrilla fighters from the main ethnic Karen fighting force have battled the military.