Crashing Down on Us
4 September 2025
Based on more than 60 interviews with individuals from Karenni and Kachin states, “Crashing Down on Us”: Myanmar Military Junta Aerial Attacks, War Crimes, and Impunity in Kachin and Karenni States documents airstrikes by the Myanmar military junta between October 2023 and November 2024.
The report reveals the indiscriminate nature of the junta’s assaults and retaliatory attacks targeting civilians and displaced populations in Kachin and Karenni states, which constitute war crimes. While airstrikes have been widely documented, far less is known about the individuals responsible for these heinous attacks. This report identifies 22 Myanmar military junta officials who should be investigated and potentially prosecuted and names specific military units responsible for the airstrikes and shelling.
Through detailed recommendations, this report urges the international community to address the impunity currently enjoyed by the Myanmar military junta and its officials and to impose immediate sanctions on the supply of aviation fuel and weapons continually received by the junta.
Executive Summary
Four years after Myanmar’s military junta staged an illegal coup d’etat, the country remains entrenched in a nationwide armed revolution for democracy and human rights, with armed conflict directly affecting nearly 97 percent of its 330 townships. As of late 2024, the military junta maintains full control over an estimated 21 percent of the country’s territory, with the remainder either under resistance control or contested. The junta has lost control of more than half of its bases in many parts of the country, marking unprecedented territorial setbacks. In retaliation and desperation, the junta has escalated its use of indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian communities.
This report documents ten specific, indiscriminate, and retaliatory airstrikes targeting civilians in Kachin and Karenni (Kayah) states—two of Myanmar’s fourteen administrative states and regions—that have faced relentless junta assaults since 2021. While the junta’s airstrikes against civilians have been widely documented, far less is known about the individuals who may be criminally liable for these alleged war crimes. This report identifies 22 junta officials who should be investigated and potentially prosecuted for their roles in war crimes in Kachin and Karenni states. It also names eight military commands linked to the airstrikes documented in this report and identifies 12 military units responsible for artillery attacks in Kachin and Karenni states that may amount to war crimes.
This report is based on 63 interviews conducted between 2022 and November 2024 with individuals from Kachin and Karenni states—including survivors, displaced persons, aid workers, and ethnic resistance members—as well as Myanmar military defectors interviewed in Chin State, Myanmar, and locations in India and Thailand.
Kachin State is home to the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of the oldest, largest, and most established ethnic armed groups in Myanmar. Decades of conflict in Kachin State have been marked by the junta’s abuses, including recent airstrikes targeting Laiza, a key KIA-held town near the Chinese border. Meanwhile, in Karenni State, armed opposition strengthened more recently in response to the military’s attacks on civilians. In 2021, the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) was founded, and now fights alongside other resistance groups against the Myanmar junta.
Since 2022, the Myanmar military junta has steadily lost territory and outposts to rapidly advancing armed resistance groups throughout the country. While the junta maintains control of Myanmar’s largest cities—Yangon, Naypyidaw, and Mandalay—in many parts of the country, the military is now largely confined to besieged army bases. As a result of this, it has increasingly resorted to airstrikes as its primary offensive military tactic, often striking civilian areas and objects or terrorizing the population with indiscriminate attacks.
This report documents the death and destruction caused by ten airstrikes and aerial bombardments in Karenni and Kachin states, including deliberate attacks on schools, hospitals, churches, and homes, as well as the forced displacement of civilians. While these specific attacks represent a fraction of the junta’s broader campaign of mass atrocity crimes, each attack constitutes a separate prosecutable war crime.
For example, the junta bombed an internally displaced persons (IDP) site known as “Bangkok” IDP camp in Pekon Township—on the border of Karenni and Shan states—on May 22, September 5, and November 18, 2024. Fortify Rights documented the September and November attacks. The September 5 airstrike, at approximately 9:15 p.m., killed nine internally displaced persons, including six children, and injured 19 others. It destroyed shelters, a school, and other critical civilian infrastructure. Eyewitnesses confirmed that the bombs struck IDP shelters, killing an entire family of six in one shelter and causing devastating injuries to others. Residents confirmed there were no military targets or armed resistance fighters in the area, underscoring the deliberate targeting of civilians. “Akayar,” a math teacher who lost his wife and two-year-old son in the airstrike, told Fortify Rights: All we have here are internally displaced persons who are helpless and facing many struggles already. No one in the camp can even defend against a soldier with a single gun. They didn’t need to attack us with an airstrike. The bomb that they brutally and recklessly dropped killed nine people.
On November 18, 2024, the junta attacked the camp again with six bombs, killing a 46-year-old internally displaced person and destroying ten structures, including a church and multiple displaced persons’ shelters. Fortify Rights spoke with three survivors who lived through both airstrikes. A 23-year-old survivor, who lost his 46-year-old mother, said: “[The airstrike] happened around 11:08 a.m. … [and] I found [her] and pulled her out of the rubble only at 5:30 p.m.”
On November 15, 2024, around 3:30 p.m., the junta’s air force bombed a Kachin Baptist church in Konlaw village, Momauk Township, Kachin State. There were no armed clashes on the ground, and the area was under junta control. More than 70 displaced people had sought refuge in the church. The attack killed nine people, including an entire family of six. “Seng Mai,” 41, who lost six relatives in the attack, told Fortify Rights: I saw a combat airplane … around 3:30 p.m. … I was in the village at the time. [My relatives] were displaced from Momauk, so they sought refuge in the church. … In the three-story building [a temporary internally displaced persons’ shelter inside the church compound], the children [were killed] on the lower level while my sister was [killed] outside, in close proximity to the entrance. The explosive blew up precisely at the entryway of the building. A 44-year-old Laiza resident told Fortify Rights, after enduring multiple airstrikes, “It felt like the world was crashing down on us.”On October 31, 2023, a junta airstrike destroyed the Sinpraw Majoi cultural center in Alen Bum, a hill in the area of Laiza, Waingmaw Township, Kachin State, injuring children and adult civilians.
On February 5, 2024, at approximately 10:15 a.m., a junta airstrike hit a school in Daw Si Ei village, Demoso Township, Karenni State, killing four children and wounding at least 19 others. Fortify Rights visited the site shortly after the attack. A teacher, 37, recalled the aftermath: “First, I went to one student’s [El Doh Htoo’s] house. His hands, as well as his legs, had been cut and separated from his body. His brothers were cleaning his body. I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t, since his body was in pieces.”
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