“Crashing Down on Us” 41 During the first attack on September 5, 2024, the junta Air Force dropped two large bombs at approximately 9:15 p.m., killing nine displaced civilians, including six children aged between two and 16, and injuring 19 others. Just a month and a half later, on November 18, 2024, two junta aircrafts attacked the camp with six bombs, killing a 46-year-old displaced person and destroying ten structures, including a church and multiple internally displaced persons’ shelters. Fortify Rights interviewed nine eyewitnesses to the two airstrikes and their aftermath, including six survivors, a doctor, and two local aid workers. Fortify Rights received and reviewed mobile-phone videos and dozens of photographs from the aftermath of the two attacks, showing sites of destroyed shelters, a church, a school, and a crater where the bomb was dropped, as well as the funeral ceremony for the victims. “Akayar,” 47, a math teacher in “Bangkok” IDP camp, who lost both his wife and two-year-old son in the first airstrike on September 5, described the attack to Fortify Rights: Around 9 p.m., a jet flew very low above us. My wife woke me up, and we moved toward our bomb shelter [located under our hut]. It’s a tight space, so I told my wife to go and sleep in there with the children, and I said I would sleep just above them. I heard the jet approaching for a second time. The sound was deafening. I dropped to the ground, and the hut disappeared from above me.31 Akayar described to Fortify Rights the moment he found his dead wife and mortally wounded son in the wreckage of their shelter: I found her lying face down on the ground. I tried to wake her, but there was no response. I turned her around and saw that her face was gone. She was dead. … I didn’t know what to do anymore, so I just focused on finding my son. He was in a cloth sling attached to her body. She was hugging [him] tightly to protect him.32 “Thar Thar,” Akayar’s two-year-old son, was still alive when he was pulled from his mother’s arms. A rescue vehicle took Akayar and Thar Thar to a local hospital: My phone was destroyed, so I vividly remember looking at the clock in the hospital. It was a little after 10 p.m.. The doctor there asked me questions about my son and my wife. I told him my wife was gone. I asked him to tell me what was wrong with my son. He told me my son wouldn’t make it. The bomb shrapnel was lodged in his brain.33 Fortify Rights spoke with “Dr. Hla,” who was part of the medical team that tried to save Thar Thar: We treated the child for 10 to 15 minutes before he passed away. … When he arrived at the hospital, it was difficult for us to find a vein in the child for injections because he was in shock, and his veins were quite flat. There was a lot of blood and brain tissue. We were unable to save him.34 On the night of the airstrike, “Jr. Nine Nine,” 20, an aid worker, was one of the first to arrive at Akayar’s shelter. He told Fortify Rights: [Akayar’s] two-year-old son was hard to rescue because the mother held her son tightly. We had to cut her clothes to rescue her son. … The junta has the habit of conducting two airstrikes in a row, so we quickly moved … to a safer location.35 31 Fortify Rights interview with C.C., Pekon Township, Karenni State, Myanmar, September 24, 2024. See also, Fortify Rights, “U.N. Security Council: Impose an Aviation Fuel and Arms Embargo on Myanmar Junta,” October 24, 2024, https://www.fortifyrights.org/mya-inv-2024-10-24/. 32 Fortify Rights interview with C.C., Pekon Township, Karenni State, Myanmar, September 24, 2024. C.C. also told Fortify Rights about feeling defenseless from military junta crimes: “All we have here are internally displaced persons who are helpless and facing many struggles already. No one in the camp can even defend against a soldier with a single gun. They didn’t need to attack us with an airstrike. The bomb that they brutally and recklessly dropped killed nine people.” 33 Ibid. 34 Fortify Rights interview with Z.I., Demoso Township, Karenni State, Myanmar, September 24, 2024. 35 Fortify Rights interview with F.Z., Pekon Township, Karenni State, Myanmar, September 29, 2024.