Around 20 students and two teachers were reported killed when Myanmar military airstrike hit a village in central Sagaing region, damaging a school.
Sources say dozens of students were injured in the early morning attack on the village of Ohe Htein Twin, located in Tabayin township, also known as Depayin.
State-run MRTV denied the airstrike on its evening news broadcast on Monday, saying anti-regime media were deliberately spreading false information.
The military has increasingly resorted to airstrikes to deal with widespread armed resistance to its rule since it seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.
Since then, more than 6,600 civilians have been killed by security forces, according to data collected by non-governmental organizations.
A spokesman for the White Depein People's Defense Forces, a resistance group fighting against military rule, told The Associated Press that a fighter jet dropped a bomb directly on the school, which was crowded with elementary and middle school students after 9 a.m.
The area is located about 70 miles northwest of Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city.
A resistance fighter who rushed to the scene to help the injured said the attack on the school run by the country's pro-democracy movement killed 20 students and two teachers and injured about 50 others. Three nearby homes were also damaged.
He added that there had been no recent fighting in the area, although Sagaing was a stronghold of resistance.
Opposition National Unity Government spokesman Nay Phoeun Latt told the AP that he had also learned of the death toll and that it could rise.
This organization is the main opposition group coordinating resistance to the military regime.
He accused the military of deliberately targeting civilians in monasteries, refugee camps, schools and hospitals on the pretext that resistance fighters were hiding in such places, although this is not true and the bombings are aimed at driving people away from the resistance movement.
Independent Myanmar media put the death toll on Monday at between 17 and more than 20 people.
A volunteer in Tabayin helping displaced people, who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals, said he had received information from the scene that 12 schoolchildren had been confirmed dead and between 30 and 50 injured.
Sagaing region, located near the border with India
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
