Myanmar Spring Chronicle – Viewpoint for October 6
(MoeMaKa) October 7, 2025
A blood-stained full moon of Thadingyut
On the full-moon day of Thadingyut, some places in Myanmar were bustling—pagodas and monasteries filled with people, a public holiday at the end of the three-month Buddhist Lent, travelers going on trips or returning home. But in other areas, people were struck by unexpected air-dropped bombs that killed civilians and destroyed homes.
While cities like Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan, Inle and Taunggyi felt little of the war’s breath that day, northern Shan State and Sagaing Region suffered sudden airstrikes by the coup military that, in seconds and minutes, brought death and heavy destruction.
Even on a day held sacred in a majority-Buddhist country, the junta did not pause its bombing. In the early morning of October 6, airstrikes hit Hsipaw and Namtu in northern Shan State—towns under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), where Ta’ang/Palang and Shan Buddhists live. No one would have expected air attacks on the Thadingyut full moon.
More than ten houses were destroyed; because bombs struck the neighborhood around Namtu’s central market, a densely populated residential area was clearly targeted. One woman was reported injured, according to Shan Herald. The strike time coincided with many residents being away at monasteries, which likely reduced casualties.
After recently retaking Nawnghkio and Kyaukme from TNLA, the junta appears to be continuing with air attacks on Hsipaw and Namtu, towns seen as next objectives. Although the military routinely claims it targets “military objectives,” most strikes fall on residential quarters, monasteries sheltering the displaced, and schools.
Some attacks may indeed follow intelligence on the whereabouts or movements of armed fighters. But the majority aim to terrorize civilians in resistance-held towns and villages and to destabilize the administration of those forces.
That night, while airstrikes hit Hsipaw and Namtu in the morning, a village in Chaung-U Township (Sagaing) holding a Thadingyut lantern-lighting and anti-dictatorship vigil was attacked from the air by a paramotor (powered paraglider) that dropped bombs. At least 20 people were killed and over 40 injured, Mandalay Free Press reported.
This was a strike from the sky on villagers gathered for a Thadingyut full-moon lantern event and protest in a PDF-controlled village. Lately in Sagaing the military has relied more on paramotors than planes or helicopters—able to range roughly 50 miles—and used one to drop grenades/bombs onto the crowd that night.
Treating villagers’ peaceful anti-junta vigil in a PDF-held area as a battlefield target and bombing them constitutes a war crime—a mass killing of civilians. The junta controls mostly the larger towns in Sagaing; it cannot securely hold the interconnecting rural roads and villages. Although parts of the Shwebo–Myitkyina road near Kantbalu were briefly re-seized in recent months, most areas remain under local PDF and village/township defense forces.
Nearly five years after the coup, on the fifth Thadingyut full moon since then, the big cities may be spared air danger, but across the country air attacks continue to destroy homes, schools, and religious buildings and to take civilian lives, leaving many with severe, life-altering injuries.