Wikipedia

Battle of Lay Kay Kaw

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
Date14 December 2021- 31 March 2024
Location
Lay Kay Kaw, Myawaddy District, Myanmar
Result KNU and PDF victory
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

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Shortly 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

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On 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

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  1. ^ Thousands displaced as junta troops clash with KNLA in ‘peace town’ Nyein Swe and Maung Shwe Wah. Myanmar Now. December 17, 2021
  2. ^ Landmines, and fear of renewed clashes, keep Lay Kay Kaw residents from returning . Myanmar Now. December 19, 2022
  3. ^ ""စစ်မဲ့ဇုန်"လေးကေ့ကော်က တိုက်ပွဲနဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲအလားအလာ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  4. ^ "Japan's gamble to help Myanmar's peace process". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  5. ^ "လေးကေ့ကော် စစ်မီးစ". The Irrawaddy. 16 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  6. ^ "Myanmar battlefield rises from the ashes". The Myanmar Times. 6 December 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ "လေးကေကော်တွင် လွှတ်တော်အမတ် အပါအဝင် ၃၂ ဦး ဖမ်းခံရ". ဧရာဝတီ. 14 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  9. ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲခွင်ပိုကျယ်လာသလို ထိုင်းဘက်ကို ခိုလှုံလာတဲ့ ဒုက္ခသည် ထောင်ချီရှိလာနေ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  10. ^ ‘Peace town’ to ghost town: Lay Kay Kaw, one year on. Frontier Myanmar. December 17, 2022
  11. ^ Myanmar Military, KNU Troops Clash in Karen State Town December 15, 2021. The Irrawaddy.
  12. ^ Myanmar Junta Forces See Heavy Casualties in Lay Kay Kaw Clashes December 17 2021. The Irrawaddy.
  13. ^ Airstrikes on residential areas in Lay Kay Kaw Myanmar Witness. October 27, 2022
  14. ^ "More than 2,500 flee to Thailand as rebels clash with Myanmar army". Reuters. 17 December 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  15. ^ "လေးကေကော်တွင် စစ်တပ်က အလောင်းလာကောက်ပြီးနောက် တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန်". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  16. ^ "မဲဆောက်မြို့ မဲ့တောင်းကလန်း စစ်ဘေးရှောင်စခန်း မှာ လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသစစ်ရှောင် ၄၀၀၀နီးပါး ခိုလှုံနေရ". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  17. ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲတွေအတွင်း ထိုင်းဘက်ကို လက်နက်ကြီးကျည် ကျရောက်မှု ထိုင်းက ကန့်ကွက်အကြောင်းကြားစာပေးပို့ထား". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  18. ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်စစ်ရှောင်ပြည်သူတွေနေတဲ့ ဖလူးကြီးရွာကို လက်နက်ကြီးတွေကျရောက်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  19. ^ "လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသကို လေကြောင်းပျံသန်းမှု ကင်းမဲ့ဇုန်အဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ပေးဖို့ UN အပါအဝင်နိုင်ငံတကာကို KNU တောင်းဆို". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  20. ^ KNU takes control of Lay Kay Kaw Myothit Town in Myawaddy Township. April 4, 2024. Mizzima.
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