2025 Depayin School bombing
| 2025 Depayin School bombing | |
|---|---|
| Part of Internal conflict in Myanmar | |
 Location map of Depayin, in Sagaing Region | |
| Native name | ဒီပဲယင်းကျောင်းဗုံးခွဲမှု |
| Location | Oe Htein Kwin village, Tabayin Township, Sagaing Region, Myanmar |
| Coordinates | 22°39′02″N 95°12′30″E / 22.6505°N 95.2084°E[1] |
| Date | 12 May 2025 Around 09:00 MMT |
| Target | School operated by the pro-democracy movement |
Attack type | Airstrike |
| Weapons | Bombs dropped from military aircraft |
| Deaths | Up to 22 |
| Injured | Dozens |
| Perpetrators | Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) |
The 2025 Depayin School bombing (Burmese: ဒီပဲယင်းကျောင်းဗုံးခွဲမှု) was an airstrike carried out by the Tatmadaw, the military of Myanmar, on 12 May 2025, targeting a school in Oe Htein Kwin village, located in Tabayin Township (also known as Depayin), Sagaing Region, Myanmar.[2][3] The attack resulted in the deaths of up to 22 individuals, including 20 students and two teachers, and injured dozens more.[4] The school was operated by the pro-democracy movement and was in session at the time of the attack.[2][5] The bombing was done despite the ceasefire announced by military junta.[6]
Background
[edit]Since the military coup in February 2021, Myanmar has experienced widespread armed resistance against military rule. The Sagaing Region, particularly Tabayin Township, has been a stronghold of the resistance movement. The Myanmar military has increasingly utilized airstrikes to suppress opposition, often targeting areas with significant civilian populations.[2][7]
Attack
[edit]At around 09:00 MMT on 12 May 2025, a Myanmar military MiG-29 fighter jet carried out an airstrike on a pro-democracy school in Oe Htein Kwin village, dropping two bombs.[8] The school was in session, with students ranging from primary to high school levels. The attack killed up to 20 students and two teachers, and injured more than 102 people.[9] Additionally, three nearby houses were damaged.[2]
Due to this attack, approximately 500 residents from the village where it is home to around 300 households have fled in search of safety.[9]
Aftermath
[edit]Eyewitnesses, aid workers, and opposition figures condemned the attack, accusing the military of deliberately targeting civilian areas to erode support for the resistance. The opposition National Unity Government of Myanmar stated that the death toll could rise and highlighted the military's pattern of attacking schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure.[10] The NUG's Ministry of Human Rights condemned the military's systematic targeting of children as a war crime and called for global legal action and UN pressure to end such attacks.[9] Furthermore, a UK Minister and Myanmar's ambassador to United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun criticized the airstrike.[11][12]
State-run MRTV television denied the reports of the airstrike, claiming that opposition forces were spreading misinformation and that the military was working to maintain peace in the area.[2][10]
See also
[edit]- Depayin massacre
- 2021 Myanmar coup d'etat
- Myanmar conflict
- Internal conflict in Myanmar
- Human rights in Myanmar
References
[edit]- ^ "Place codes (Pcodes)". Myanmar Information Management Unit.
- ^ a b c d e Peck, Grant (12 May 2025). "An airstrike in central Myanmar kills up to 22 people at a bombed school, reports say". The Washington Post. Associated Press. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
- ^ "At least 22 dead, over 50 injured in Myanmar junta airstrike on school in Sagaing's Depayin township". Mizzima News. 13 May 2025.
- ^ "Military bombs school in Depayin, killing two teachers and close to 20 children". Narinjara News. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
- ^ "At Least 11 Schoolkids Massacred in Myanmar Junta Air Raid in Sagaing". The Irrawaddy. 12 May 2025. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
- ^ Agency, Yangon Khit Thit News (12 May 2025). "Breaking News - ဒီပဲယင်းမြို့နယ်၊ အိုးထိမ်းကွင်းကျေးရွာစာသင်ကျောင်းကို စစ်တပ်က လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကျဲမှု ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူ ၅၀ ဝန်းကျင် ထိခိုက်သေဆုံးနိုင်ဟုဆို". Khit Thit Media. Retrieved 14 May 2025.
- ^ No.12, Uncredited-Shwebo District Battalion (13 May 2025). "Myanmar Conflict". The Batesville Daily Guard. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "ဒီပဲယင်း၊ အိုးတိန်တွင်းရွာလေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်မှုဘာတွေထူးခြားလဲ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 13 May 2025. Retrieved 14 May 2025.
- ^ a b c Myanmar, Thanlwin (14 May 2025). "ဒီပဲယင်းမြို့နယ်၊ အိုးထိမ်းတွင်းရွာစာသင်ကျောင်းဗုံးကြဲခံရမှု သေဆုံးသူ ၂၂ ဦးနှင့် ထိခိုက်ဒဏ် ရာရရှိသူ ၁၀၂ ဦးရှိ၊ နိုင်ငံတကာ တရားရုံးများတွင်သာမက နိုင်ငံအလိုက် တရားရုံးများတွင်ပါ တရားမျှတမှု ဖော်ဆောင်နိုင်ရေး ကြိုးပမ်းဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ဟု NUG ထုတ်ပြန်". Thanlwin Myanmar (in Burmese). Retrieved 14 May 2025.
- ^ a b Now, Myanmar (13 May 2025). "အပစ်ရပ်ကြေညာထားချိန် ကလေးများ အစုအပြုံလိုက်သေစေသည့် ဗုံးကြဲမှု". Myanmar Now. Retrieved 14 May 2025.
- ^ "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.
- Military operations of the Myanmar civil war (2021–present)
- 2020s in Sagaing Region
- 2025 airstrikes
- 2025 in Myanmar
- May 2025 in Asia
- Mass murder in 2025
- Sagaing Region
- School bombings in Asia
- School massacres in Asia
- Airstrikes in Asia
- Attacks on schools in 2025
- War crimes during the Myanmar civil war (2021–present)
- 21st-century mass murder in Myanmar
- Airstrikes conducted by Myanmar
- Children killed in wars
- 2025 building bombings
- Building bombings in Myanmar