2025 Depayin School bombing
The 2025 Depayin School bombing (Burmese: ဒီပဲယင်းကျောင်းဗုံးကွဲမှု) was an airstrike by the Tatmadaw, the military of Myanmar. It happened on 12 May 2025 in Oe Htein Kwin village, Tabayin Township (also called Depayin), in Sagaing Region, Myanmar.[2][3] The attack hit a school run by the pro-democracy movement.[4] At least 22 people were killed, including 20 students and 2 teachers. Many others were injured. The bombing happened while the school was in session. It happened even though the military said there was a ceasefire.[2][5]
| 2025 Depayin School bombing | |
|---|---|
| Location | Oe Htein Kwin village, Tabayin Township, Sagaing Region, Myanmar |
| Coordinates | 22°39′02″N 95°12′30″E / 22.6505°N 95.2084°ECoordinates: 22°39′02″N 95°12′30″E / 22.6505°N 95.2084°E[1] |
| Date | 12 May 2025 Around 09:00 MMT |
| Attack type | Airstrike |
| Weapon(s) | Bombs dropped from military aircraft |
| Deaths | Up to 22 |
| Injured | Dozens |
Background
After the military coup in 2021, many people in Myanmar resisted military rule.[6] Sagaing Region, especially Tabayin Township, became a strong area for the resistance. The Myanmar military began using more airstrikes, even in civilian areas.[2][7]
Attack
At around 9:00 a.m. on 12 May 2025, a Myanmar military MiG-29 jet dropped two bombs on the school in Oe Htein Kwin village. The school had students from primary to high school. The attack killed 20 students and 2 teachers. More than 100 people were injured. Three houses near the school were also damaged.[2][8]
About 500 people fled from the village after the bombing. The village had around 300 households.[9]
Aftermath
Eyewitnesses, aid workers, and opposition leaders said the military targeted civilians to stop support for the resistance. The National Unity Government (NUG) said more people might have died. They said the military has a pattern of attacking schools and hospitals.[10] Additionally, three nearby houses were damaged.[2]
The NUG’s Ministry of Human Rights called the attack a war crime and asked the United Nations and other countries to take action. A UK minister and Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN, Kyaw Moe Tun, also condemned the attack.[10]
The military’s state TV, MRTV, denied the reports.[10] Furthermore, a UK Minister and Myanmar's ambassador to United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun criticized the airstrike.[11][12] It said the opposition was spreading false information and the army was working for peace.[3]
Related pages
References
- ↑ "Place codes (Pcodes)". Myanmar Information Management Unit.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Peck, Grant (2025-05-12). "An airstrike in central Myanmar kills up to 22 people at a bombed school, reports say" (in en-US). The Washington Post. . https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/12/myanmar-airstrike-school-saigaing-resistance-military/6388bcfc-2f2f-11f0-8498-1f8214bba2d2_story.html. Retrieved 2025-05-13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Now, Myanmar (2025-05-13). "အပစ်ရပ်ကြေညာထားချိန် ကလေးများ အစုအပြုံလိုက်သေစေသည့် ဗုံးကြဲမှု". Myanmar Now. Retrieved 2025-05-14.
- ↑ "Military bombs school in Depayin, killing two teachers and close to 20 children". Narinjara News. Retrieved 2025-05-13.
- ↑ "At least 22 dead, over 50 injured in Myanmar junta airstrike on school in Sagaing’s Depayin township". Mizzima News. 13 May 2025. https://eng.mizzima.com/2025/05/13/22300.
- ↑ Agency, Yangon Khit Thit News (2025-05-12). "Breaking News - ဒီပဲယင်းမြို့နယ်၊ အိုးထိမ်းကွင်းကျေးရွာစာသင်ကျောင်းကို စစ်တပ်က လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကျဲမှု ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူ ၅၀ ဝန်းကျင် ထိခိုက်သေဆုံးနိုင်ဟုဆို". Khit Thit Media. Retrieved 2025-05-14.
- ↑ "At Least 11 Schoolkids Massacred in Myanmar Junta Air Raid in Sagaing". The Irrawaddy. 2025-05-12. Retrieved 2025-05-13.
- ↑ No.12, Uncredited-Shwebo District Battalion (2025-05-13). "Myanmar Conflict". The Batesville Daily Guard. Retrieved 2025-05-13.[dead link]
- ↑ "ဒီပဲယင်း၊ အိုးတိန်တွင်းရွာလေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်မှုဘာတွေထူးခြားလဲ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in မြန်မာဘာသာ). 2025-05-13. Retrieved 2025-05-14.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Myanmar, Thanlwin (2025-05-14). "ဒီပဲယင်းမြို့နယ်၊ အိုးထိမ်းတွင်းရွာစာသင်ကျောင်းဗုံးကြဲခံရမှု သေဆုံးသူ ၂၂ ဦးနှင့် ထိခိုက်ဒဏ် ရာရရှိသူ ၁၀၂ ဦးရှိ၊ နိုင်ငံတကာ တရားရုံးများတွင်သာမက နိုင်ငံအလိုက် တရားရုံးများတွင်ပါ တရားမျှတမှု ဖော်ဆောင်နိုင်ရေး ကြိုးပမ်းဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ဟု NUG ထုတ်ပြန်". Thanlwin Myanmar (in မြန်မာဘာသာ). Retrieved 2025-05-14.
- ↑ "Myanmar ambassador condemns junta airstrike on a school at UN SDG 16 conference". Mizzima News.
- ↑ "UK Minister shocked by Myanmar junta's deadly targeting of a school in Sagaing". Mizzima News.