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Letpanhla: A Myanmar junta airstrike on a village held by anti-coup fighters killed at least 12 people according to a local administrative official, who said the bombardment targeted civilian areas.
Myanmar's military seized power in a 2021 coup which has plunged the country into a fractious civil war and analysts say the embattled junta is increasingly using air strikes to target civilians.
The Friday afternoon strike hit the village of Letpanhla around 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of the country's second biggest city of Mandalay.
The village in Singu township is held by the People's Defence Forces (PDF) -- anti-coup guerillas who took up arms after the military toppled the country's civilian government four years ago.
"A lot of people were killed because they dropped bombs on crowded areas," said the local administrative official, who asked to remain anonymous. "It happened at the time people were going to the market".
"We're currently making a list and have registered 12 people killed," he said on Saturday.
A junta spokesman could not be reached for comment and AFP could not independently verify the death toll. The local PDF unit reported there had been 27 fatalities.

Wails of grief

Witness Myint Soe, 62, said he tried to hide as an aircraft came in for a bombing run.
"I heard huge bomb blast sounds at the same time I was hiding," he said. "When I came out and looked at the market area I saw it was on fire."
In the aftermath, buildings which appeared to be homes and a restaurant were ablaze, as people in civilian clothing and camouflage uniforms doused the flames with water.
The limp body of a child with a bloody head wound was loaded into the back of an ambulance by a man whose uniform was marked with the PDF insignia.
Wails of grief could be heard as some of the crowd glanced up towards the sky.
Myanmar is now controlled by a patchwork of junta forces, ethnic armed groups and anti-coup partisans.
The number of military air strikes on civilians has risen year on year during the civil war, according to non-profit organisation Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), with nearly 800 in 2024.
That figure was more than triple the previous year and ACLED predicted the junta will continue to rely on air strikes because it is "under increasing military pressure on the ground".
"The military will persevere in its indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilian populated areas in an effort to undermine the opposition's support base and destroy their morale," it said in December.
An offensive by an alliance of armed ethnic groups in late 2023 inflicted stinging territorial losses on the junta.
But analysts say the Myanmar air force, which operates with Russian technical support, has been key to fending off its adversaries based mainly in the borderlands.
More than 3.5 million citizens are currently displaced and half the population lives in poverty.

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia: Over a year after a devastating winter wiped out virtually his entire sheep flock, herder Zandan Lkhamsuren is still reckoning with the damage wrought by Mongolia’s increasingly erratic extreme weather.
The vast country is one of the most affected by climate change, by some counts warming three times faster than the global average.
The link between rising temperatures and extreme weather — ranging from droughts and floods to heatwaves and cold snaps — is well-established.
In Mongolia the effects are stark.
Among other consequences, deep freezes like the one that killed Zandan’s herd — known as dzuds — have been growing more frequent and intense.
“Last year’s winter was the hardest I’ve ever known,” the 48-year-old told AFP, describing daytime temperatures of minus 32 degrees Celsius (minus 25.6 degrees Fahrenheit) that plunged to minus 42C at night.

Heavy snowfall and frozen ground meant his sheep could not find food, and all except two of his 280-strong flock perished.
Across Mongolia, more than seven million animals were killed, over a tenth of the country’s total.
“Our livestock used to cover all of our expenses, and we used to live very nicely,” Zandan told AFP as he served hot salted milk tea in his traditional ger home.
But the loss of his animals and the loans he took out to keep feeding a smaller, hardier herd of goats mean he now struggles to make ends meet.
Both his daughters were supposed to start university in the capital Ulaanbaatar last year, but the family could not afford their tuition fees.
“Now my strategy is just to focus on what I have left,” Zandan said.
Next to the ger’s coal burner, a persistent bleating came from a box containing a sickly week-old goat.

As the setting sun cast long shadows over the steppe, Zandan pulled on a thick green brocade jacket and strode outside, whistling as he shepherded his indignant charges into a shelter for the night.
He said he was keeping a positive mindset — if he could boost his goat numbers, he might be able to fund his daughters’ studies further down the line.
“It’s just one downside of herders’ lives,” he said stoically. “But I’m sure we can recover.”
The problem for Zandan — and other agricultural workers that make up a third of Mongolia’s population — is that dzuds are happening more often.
They used to occur about once every 10 years, but there have been six in the last decade or so, according to the United Nations.
And while overgrazing has long contributed to desertification on the steppe, climate change is making things even worse.
Droughts in the summers have made it harder to fatten animals and stockpile fodder for winter.
“Like many other herder men, I always look at the sky and try to predict the weather,” Zandan told AFP.
“But it’s been getting difficult,” he said. “Climate change is happening.”

His motorbike kicking up clouds of dust, 36-year-old Enebold Davaa shared those concerns as he chased his herd across the plain.

Enebold’s family lost more than 100 goats, 40 sheep and three cows last winter.
“It’s our main source of income, so we felt very heavy, it was very hard for us,” he said.
This year’s milder winter had allowed the family to recover some of their losses, but Enebold said he viewed the future with trepidation.
“Of course we are anxious, but there’s nothing we can predict now,” he said.
Local official Gankhuyag Banzragch told AFP most families in the district lost 30 to 40 percent of their livestock last winter.
As herding became more difficult, many families were moving away, he added.
A quarter of Mongolians still lead nomadic lives, but in recent decades hundreds of thousands have left the steppe for urban centers, particularly the capital.
As she boiled horsemeat dumplings, Enebold’s wife said they too might consider a move if they lost more livestock.
“The main challenge is accessibility of education for our children in the city,” she said.
Her husband had a more fundamental reason for staying.
“I want to keep herding my livestock,” he said. “I want to keep the same lifestyle as now.”