Battle of Lay Kay Kaw explained

Conflict:Battle of Lay Kay Kaw
Partof:the Myanmar civil war (2021–present) and internal conflict in Myanmar
Place:Lay Kay Kaw, Myawaddy District, Myanmar
Date:14 December 2021- 31 March 2024
Result:KNU and PDF victory
Combatant1: Karen National Union
People's Defense Force
Combatant2: State Administration Council
Strength1:Unknown
Strength2:Unknown
Casualties1:At least 4 killed
Casualties2:At least 5 killed[1]
Casualties3:At least 30 people arrested; at least 1500 displaced in Thailand[2]

The Battle of Lay Kay Kaw was an engagement between allied Karen National Union/ People's Defense Force fighters and the Myanmar Tatmadaw that began on 14 December 2021.

Background

Shortly after negotiations between the KNU and the Tatmadaw,[3] Lay Kay Kaw was built in 2015 as a cooperation between the then-chief minister of Kayin State, Zaw Min, and KNU's chairperson, Saw Mutu Say Poe, with the support of Nippon Foundation,[4] [5] Divided into six quarters, it has a population of more than 3000.[6] Despite administration of the Kayin State Government, the town has been controlled de facto[7] by the KNU for six years.[8]

Since the February 2021 coup, anti-coup protesters and those who joined the civil disobedience movement came to Lay Kay Kaw to evade the military and receive guerrilla training.[9] [10]

Battle

On 14 December 2021, the Tatmadaw raided Lay Kay Kaw, arresting dozens of former NLD members and other anti-regime activists.[11] [12]

Days after the raid, the KNLA and PDF forces clashed with Myanmar Army troops, who resorted to airstrikes and heavy artillery.[13] Due to these strikes, at least 2500 local villagers[14] [15] fled to Mae Sot, border town in Thailand.[16] After a shell landed in a sugarcane plantation, and a small fire broke out, Thai authorities, through Thai–Myanmar Border Committee, issued a warning that "it was prepared to retaliate if stray artillery shells landed on Thai soil",[7] [17] and Thai armed forces were deployed in the border area.[18] On 20 December, KNU urged the UN and international community to establish the area as a no-fly zone.[19]

Sometime during late 2022, the Myanmar junta captured the town. However, by 31 March 2024, anti-junta forces retook Lay Kay Kaw.[20]

Notes and References

  1. https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/thousands-displaced-as-junta-troops-clash-with-knla-in-peace-town/ Thousands displaced as junta troops clash with KNLA in ‘peace town’
  2. https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/landmines-and-fear-of-renewed-clashes-keep-lay-kay-kaw-residents-from-returning/ Landmines, and fear of renewed clashes, keep Lay Kay Kaw residents from returning
  3. News: "စစ်မဲ့ဇုန်"လေးကေ့ကော်က တိုက်ပွဲနဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲအလားအလာ . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my.
  4. News: Japan's gamble to help Myanmar's peace process . 20 December 2021 . Nikkei Asia.
  5. News: လေးကေ့ကော် စစ်မီးစ . 20 December 2021 . The Irrawaddy . 16 December 2021.
  6. News: Myanmar battlefield rises from the ashes . 20 December 2021 . The Myanmar Times . 6 December 2019.
  7. News: 2,500 Myanmar villagers flee army troops into Thailand . 20 December 2021 . ABC News . en. https://web.archive.org/web/20220206032052/https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/2500-myanmar-villagers-flee-army-troops-thailand-81809006. February 6, 2022.
  8. News: လေးကေကော်တွင် လွှတ်တော်အမတ် အပါအဝင် ၃၂ ဦး ဖမ်းခံရ . 20 December 2021 . ဧရာဝတီ . 14 December 2021.
  9. News: လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲခွင်ပိုကျယ်လာသလို ထိုင်းဘက်ကို ခိုလှုံလာတဲ့ ဒုက္ခသည် ထောင်ချီရှိလာနေ . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my.
  10. https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/peace-town-to-ghost-town-lay-kay-kaw-one-year-on/ ‘Peace town’ to ghost town: Lay Kay Kaw, one year on
  11. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-military-knu-troops-clash-in-karen-state-town.html Myanmar Military, KNU Troops Clash in Karen State Town
  12. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-junta-forces-see-heavy-casualties-in-lay-kay-kaw-clashes.html Myanmar Junta Forces See Heavy Casualties in Lay Kay Kaw Clashes
  13. https://www.myanmarwitness.org/reports/airstrikes-on-residential-areas-in-lay-kay-kaw Airstrikes on residential areas in Lay Kay Kaw
  14. News: More than 2,500 flee to Thailand as rebels clash with Myanmar army . 20 December 2021 . Reuters . 17 December 2021 . en.
  15. News: လေးကေကော်တွင် စစ်တပ်က အလောင်းလာကောက်ပြီးနောက် တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန် . 20 December 2021 . Myanmar NOW . my.
  16. News: မဲဆောက်မြို့ မဲ့တောင်းကလန်း စစ်ဘေးရှောင်စခန်း မှာ လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသစစ်ရှောင် ၄၀၀၀နီးပါး ခိုလှုံနေရ . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my-MM.
  17. News: လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲတွေအတွင်း ထိုင်းဘက်ကို လက်နက်ကြီးကျည် ကျရောက်မှု ထိုင်းက ကန့်ကွက်အကြောင်းကြားစာပေးပို့ထား . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my-MM.
  18. News: လေးကေ့ကော်စစ်ရှောင်ပြည်သူတွေနေတဲ့ ဖလူးကြီးရွာကို လက်နက်ကြီးတွေကျရောက် . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my-MM.
  19. News: လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသကို လေကြောင်းပျံသန်းမှု ကင်းမဲ့ဇုန်အဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ပေးဖို့ UN အပါအဝင်နိုင်ငံတကာကို KNU တောင်းဆို . 20 December 2021 . BBC News မြန်မာ . my-MM.
  20. https://eng.mizzima.com/2024/04/04/8659 KNU takes control of Lay Kay Kaw Myothit Town in Myawaddy Township

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