At least 34 people were killed and dozens injured when Myanmar's military struck a hospital in the western town of Mrauk-U, according to sources on the ground. The facility is in Rakhine State, territory controlled by the Arakan Army, one of the strongest ethnic armed organizations fighting the military government.
The attack occurred at about 9 p.m. local time, or 14:30 GMT. The Arakan Army's health department said 10 patients died at the scene and many others were wounded. Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the group, told the BBC that most of the casualties were hospital patients and accused the military of deliberately attacking a civilian location.
Images believed to show the aftermath circulated on social media. They depicted damaged or missing roofs across parts of the hospital complex, broken beds and debris scattered through the site. The supplied reporting did not provide independent verification of every image or a final breakdown of the wounded.
Myanmar's military did not comment directly on the strike. Pro-military Telegram accounts said the attacks were not aimed at civilians, but offered no detailed alternative account in the supplied evidence. The difference between those claims and the reports from Arakan Army-linked sources could not immediately be reconciled.
The hospital strike came during an intensified military campaign to recover territory from ethnic armies. The junta had increased its use of airstrikes and heavy bombardment and had also deployed motorized paragliders to drop bombs. Earlier in 2025, more than 20 people were killed when one such aircraft dropped two bombs on a crowd at a religious festival.
The broader conflict began after the military seized power in a 2021 coup, triggering a civil war in which thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Opposition forces and ethnic armies at one stage controlled more than half the country, although new technology and equipment from China and Russia appeared to help the junta make gains.
The attack also occurred as the authorities prepared for a general election scheduled for December 28, the first since the coup. The junta described the vote as a route to stability, while critics and opposition groups rejected it as illegitimate. UN human rights expert Tom Andrews called it a sham, and ethnic armies pledged to boycott it.
With the military silent and access shaped by the ongoing war, responsibility claims and the full casualty list remained difficult to verify independently. The available accounts nonetheless consistently described a hospital devastated during a wider escalation in aerial warfare. Political pressure surrounding the vote was already intensifying. Authorities had arrested people accused of disrupting the election, including a man alleged to have distributed anti-election messages on Facebook, and said they were seeking 10 activists connected with a protest.
