An army airstrike on a village in western Myanmar has killed at least 40 people, reports say

Myanmar's military conducted an airstrike on a village controlled by an armed ethnic minority group, resulting in approximately 40 deaths and at least 20 injuries, according to officials from the armed ethnic minority organization and local charities on Thursday. They also stated that the bombing ignited fires that destroyed hundreds of homes.

The attack occurred on Wednesday in Kyauk Ni Maw village on Ramree Island in western Rakhine State, which is controlled by the Arakan Army. The military has not announced any attacks in the area. Independent verification of the village's situation is not possible, as internet and mobile phone services are largely cut off in the region.

Myanmar has been plagued by violent conflict since the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After the military used deadly force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and much of the country is now embroiled in conflict.

Arakan Army spokesman Khaing Thukha told the Associated Press that a fighter jet bombed the village on Wednesday afternoon, killing 40 civilians and injuring more than 20. “All the dead were civilians. Among the dead and injured were women and children,” Khaing Thukha said. The fires caused by the airstrike spread throughout the village, destroying more than 500 homes, Khaing Thukha added. It is not yet clear why the village was targeted.

A local charity head and independent media also reported the airstrike and casualties. Over the past three years, the military government has increased its airstrikes against armed pro-democracy groups known as People's Defense Forces, as well as armed ethnic minority groups that have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades. These two groups sometimes unite to fight the military.

Ramree Island, located 340 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, was captured by the Arakan Army in March of last year. The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-equipped military wing of the Arakan ethnic minority movement, which seeks autonomy from the central government of Myanmar. It is also a member of an alliance of armed ethnic groups that recently gained strategic territory in the country's northeast on the border with China.

The group launched an offensive in Rakhine State in November 2023 and now controls a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine State’s 17 townships, leaving only the state capital of Sittwe and two important townships near Ramree under the control of the military government. The head of a charity that has been helping residents of the village told the Associated Press on Thursday that the airstrike killed at least 41 people and injured 50, and that the target of the attack was the village's market.

The head, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, was not in the town at the time. He said he received the information from members of his organization in the village, who are facing a shortage of medicine to treat the wounded. Rakhine State news media, including the Narinjara News, also reported the attack and posted photos online of people putting out fires in homes.

Rakhine State, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign by the military in 2017 that forced about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to cross the border into Bangladesh to seek safety.