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.
| Battle of Lay Kay Kaw | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Myanmar civil war (2021–present) and internal conflict in Myanmar | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Karen National Union People's Defense Force |
 State Administration Council | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| Unknown | Unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| At least 4 killed | At least 5 killed[1] | ||||||
| At least 30 people arrested; at least 1500 displaced in Thailand[2] | |||||||
Background
editShortly 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
editOn 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]
References
edit- ^ Thousands displaced as junta troops clash with KNLA in ‘peace town’ Nyein Swe and Maung Shwe Wah. Myanmar Now. December 17, 2021
- ^ Landmines, and fear of renewed clashes, keep Lay Kay Kaw residents from returning . Myanmar Now. December 19, 2022
- ^ ""စစ်မဲ့ဇုန်"လေးကေ့ကော်က တိုက်ပွဲနဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲအလားအလာ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "Japan's gamble to help Myanmar's peace process". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေ့ကော် စစ်မီးစ". The Irrawaddy. 16 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "Myanmar battlefield rises from the ashes". The Myanmar Times. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ a b "2,500 Myanmar villagers flee army troops into Thailand". ABC News. Archived from the original on February 6, 2022. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေကော်တွင် လွှတ်တော်အမတ် အပါအဝင် ၃၂ ဦး ဖမ်းခံရ". ဧရာဝတီ. 14 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲခွင်ပိုကျယ်လာသလို ထိုင်းဘက်ကို ခိုလှုံလာတဲ့ ဒုက္ခသည် ထောင်ချီရှိလာနေ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ ‘Peace town’ to ghost town: Lay Kay Kaw, one year on. Frontier Myanmar. December 17, 2022
- ^ Myanmar Military, KNU Troops Clash in Karen State Town December 15, 2021. The Irrawaddy.
- ^ Myanmar Junta Forces See Heavy Casualties in Lay Kay Kaw Clashes December 17 2021. The Irrawaddy.
- ^ Airstrikes on residential areas in Lay Kay Kaw Myanmar Witness. October 27, 2022
- ^ "More than 2,500 flee to Thailand as rebels clash with Myanmar army". Reuters. 17 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေကော်တွင် စစ်တပ်က အလောင်းလာကောက်ပြီးနောက် တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန်". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "မဲဆောက်မြို့ မဲ့တောင်းကလန်း စစ်ဘေးရှောင်စခန်း မှာ လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသစစ်ရှောင် ၄၀၀၀နီးပါး ခိုလှုံနေရ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲတွေအတွင်း ထိုင်းဘက်ကို လက်နက်ကြီးကျည် ကျရောက်မှု ထိုင်းက ကန့်ကွက်အကြောင်းကြားစာပေးပို့ထား". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်စစ်ရှောင်ပြည်သူတွေနေတဲ့ ဖလူးကြီးရွာကို လက်နက်ကြီးတွေကျရောက်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသကို လေကြောင်းပျံသန်းမှု ကင်းမဲ့ဇုန်အဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ပေးဖို့ UN အပါအဝင်နိုင်ငံတကာကို KNU တောင်းဆို". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
- ^ KNU takes control of Lay Kay Kaw Myothit Town in Myawaddy Township. April 4, 2024. Mizzima.