Myanmar’s military was responsible for at least 702 civilian deaths during a six-month period surrounding military-organised elections, according to a United Nations Human Rights Office report. The verified toll from August through January included 224 women and 153 children, while the report warned that declining international assistance was worsening hardship for millions.
The UN said aerial attacks remained the largest single cause of civilian destruction and suffering. Sagaing was identified as the most dangerous region, with 191 recorded deaths, including 60 women and 30 children, as the military sought to regain territory.
Among the incidents documented was an October attack in Chaung-U, Sagaing, where munitions hit people assembled outside a school. Twenty-three people, four of them children, were killed and more than 60 were wounded. The gathering marked the end of Buddhist Lent and included calls for political prisoners to be released, military conscription to end and the elections to be rejected.
In December, a military aircraft bombed a tea shop in Tabayin as residents watched a football match, the report said. At least 19 people were killed and 20 wounded. The report also described abuses against Rohingya people, including forced recruitment by the Arakan Army, killings, arbitrary detention and sexual violence.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said reductions in funding had removed local protection programmes that had offered some relief from continuing attacks. His comments placed the documented deaths within a broader conflict that began when the armed forces seized power from Myanmar’s elected government in 2021 and imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi. Thousands have since died and millions have been displaced.
Armed opposition groups still controlled large parts of the country, but gains made more than two years earlier had been partly reversed. Forced conscription and expanded military drone capabilities had helped put the armed forces back on the offensive in many areas.
The six-month reporting period began when the military announced elections from which prominent opposition parties were excluded. Voting did not occur in large areas affected by civil war. The armed forces were guaranteed one quarter of parliamentary seats, while the military-backed USDP won nearly 80% of the remaining seats. General Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup, became president in April. Those political arrangements form the context for the UN’s casualty findings; the report’s minimum figure reflects deaths it said credible sources had verified rather than a complete toll for Myanmar’s conflict.
The UN’s demographic breakdown shows that more than half of the verified dead were neither women nor children, while still documenting a substantial toll among both groups. Its regional and incident-level examples supported the broader minimum without claiming that every death in the civil war had been independently recorded during the reporting window.
