In one of the deadliest days in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 military coup, dozens of people, and perhaps more than 100, were killed on Saturday by security forces cracking down on nationwide protests.
Among those fatally shot on Saturday were a 5-year-old boy, two 13-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl. A baby girl in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was struck in the eye with a rubber bullet, although her parents said she was expected to survive.
“Today is a day of shame for the armed forces,” Dr. Sasa, a spokesman for a group of elected officials who say they represent Myanmar’s government, said in a statement. The killings also drew condemnation from countries around the word, including the United States, Britain and the European Union.
On Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Thomas L. Vajda, said security forces were “murdering unarmed civilians, including children,” and he called the bloodshed “horrifying.”
Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, called Saturday’s killings “a new low” in a Twitter post.
The widespread killings, which took place in more than two dozen cities across the country, came a day after military-run television threatened protesters with getting “shot in the back and the back of the head” if they persisted in opposing military rule. Many of Saturday’s victims were bystanders.
In Meiktila, a city in central Myanmar, 14-year-old Ma Pan Ei Phyu was at home when security forces began shooting randomly in the neighborhood, said her father, U Min Min Tun. The family did not hear a shot, and they didn’t realize that she had been killed until she fell to the floor, having been hit in the chest.
In Yangon, Maung Wai Yan Tun, 13, was playing outside when the police and soldiers arrived. Scared, he ran away and was shot, his mother told the online news outlet Mizzima.
The killings took place on Armed Forces Day, a holiday honoring the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s military is known.
A protester running past a roadblock in Yangon, above. An injured protester being carried to a hospital, below.
The mother of Aung Zin Myint, 20, mourned over the body of her son, a student shot by security forces earlier in the morning in Dala Township, near Yangon.
The police arresting a protester in Yangon.
Nay Win Tun, left, and Moe Moe Khine, carrying their 1-year-old daughter, Thin Thawdaw Tun, who was struck in the eye by a rubber bullet fired by the security forces while the baby was inside their home in Yangon.
Family members mourning as social workers took away the body of U Win Myint, 46, who was shot in the chest as security forces fired on protesters in Dala Township.
Protesters preparing for a crackdown by the security forces.
Protesters take refuge behind makeshift barriers.
A protester with a gunshot wound arriving at a hospital in Yangon.
Social workers carrying away the coffin of Kyaw Htet Aung.
