Dozens Killed as Myanmar Jet Bombs Rakhine Market in Deadliest Attack on State in Months

At least 33 people were killed and dozens more wounded when a Myanmar military fighter jet struck a busy market in the northern part of Rakhine state on Monday, according to rescue officials and the rebel group controlling the area. The attack, which came down on the market area in Kyauktaw town in the west of the country, is the latest in a grinding campaign of air raids carried out by the military government against ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy fighters.

The Arakan army, the dominant rebel faction in Rakhine, said a fighter jet dropped two bombs near the local market at noon local time (0530 GMT). Those killed included market vendors, shoppers and pedestrians caught in the open at the height of the trading day, the group said, warning that the death toll "may continue to increase" as search teams work through the rubble.

A senior rescue official in Rakhine, Wai Hun Aung, confirmed the account to The Associated Press. He stressed the weight of what happened: the market struck was the region's principal wholesale centre, a place where traders and shoppers regularly travelled from across the state to buy and sell goods. "This is one of the most severe airstrikes in Rakhine," he said, underscoring the scale of the destruction in a town that serves as a commercial hub for much of western Rakhine.

Photographs and videos posted on social media showed buildings ablaze, damaged vehicles and sections of a nearby bridge destroyed. Images of smoke rising over a residential area in Kyauktaw suggested the blasts and subsequent fires extended well beyond the market itself, with debris and burning structures visible across several surrounding blocks.

Myanmar's military did not immediately respond to the report. The junta has previously said that it strikes only legitimate military targets and has accused resistance groups of terrorism — language observers often read as a justification for attacks on civilian sites in a conflict where front lines are difficult to distinguish from populated areas. The absence of a comment on Monday left the reported toll unverifiable by independent means, with figures drawn from rescue workers and the Arakan army.

The raid fits a broader pattern of escalating violence since the military seized power in 2021, ousting the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. A nationwide resistance movement has since hardened into a civil war pitting the military government against a patchwork of ethnic and pro-democracy armed groups, several of which are among the best-trained and best-equipped formations in the country.

Myanmar's military leadership has spent the intervening years consolidating rather than relinquishing power. President Min Aung Hlaing, the former chief of the military government, was elected by a military-backed parliament in April, formalising his grip on the apparatus of state after five years of direct army rule.

In Rakhine, the Arakan army — a formidable fighting force seeking autonomy for the state's ethnic minority — has made steady territorial gains. It launched a major offensive in November 2023 and has since seized strategically important military headquarters and 14 of the state's 17 townships, leaving the government with a drastically reduced hold on the province. The Kyauktaw strike landed in territory the group says it controls, a fact that would place it squarely among the rebel side's strongholds.

The economic toll of that ground offensive has been felt far beyond the battlefield. The military has imposed severe restrictions on trade routes into Rakhine since the fighting intensified, squeezing the flow of goods and worsening food shortages in communities already dealing with the consequences of heavy displacement. Bombing a wholesale market goes directly to that mechanism: it kills traders, destroys inventory and disrupts the distribution network that feeds towns and camps across the province.

The strike also echoes a December attack on a hospital in Rakhine's Mrauk U township, which killed at least 33 people and wounded 70 others — a strikingly similar toll, in a township that rebel forces also say they control. Together, the two incidents underline a pattern of attacks on facilities that carry clear civilian functions and are unlikely to serve a purely military purpose.

Humanitarian conditions in Rakhine are already at crisis levels. Nearly half a million people have been displaced by the conflict, according to United Nations data, one of the largest displacement figures anywhere in the world relative to the size of the affected population. Camps across the state are strained by shortages of shelter, food and medical care, with residents living under the constant threat of renewed strikes.

The United Nations reported in August that the human rights situation in Myanmar has plummeted to a new low, citing brutal abuse of the Rohingya minority and the devastating effects of illicit economic activity, including illegal mining for rare earth minerals — a trade that funds both the conflict and the exploitation of civilians. The UN's assessment has been echoed by diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the crisis, including Malaysia's offer to invite Myanmar's leader in a push to accelerate Rohingya repatriation.

Technology has also reshaped the battlefield. Rebel groups and the military are now both using drones in a protracted war that has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project. Drones have extended the reach of both sides, allowing attacks deep into territory that was once considered beyond reach, and raising the frequency of strikes in towns such as Kyauktaw.

For Rakhine, the immediate questions are how many more bodies remain under the debris of the market, whether the wounded can reach clinics in a town already cut off by trade restrictions, and whether the Arakan army's territorial momentum can be translated into protection for the hundreds of thousands of civilians living in the areas it claims. Monday's strike suggests the military is willing to accept heavy civilian losses to contest that ground — and that the people of Rakhine, long treated as collateral in a national civil war, remain so.