By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Myanmar’s military stepped up aerial attacks on civilians before an election held last December and January, and all sides in the country’s civil war committed war crimes and serious abuses including torture and sexual violence in the past year, U.N. investigators said on Tuesday.
“Over the past year, the Mechanism’s investigations showed that the frequency and intensity of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Myanmar military and by various armed groups continued to escalate,” the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said in a report.
The mechanism was formed in 2018 to investigate abuses in Myanmar since 2011, including crimes committed against the mainly Muslim Rohingya minority in 2017 when hundreds of thousands were forced to flee a military crackdown and other abuses since a military coup in 2021.
The report said attacks on civilians had continued in the last year and that violence increased before the military-managed election held between December 2025 and January 2026.
The election, which Western governments and rights groups said was neither free nor fair, was won by a military-backed party, allowing Myanmar’s then junta leader Min Aung Hlaing to become president. He made a landmark visit to Thailand this month in search of international legitimacy.
Myanmar’s military government did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Reuters.
AERIAL ATTACKS
The IIMM said it had documented a pattern of deliberate aerial attacks on homes, schools, medical facilities, religious buildings and camps for internally displaced people. There was a notable escalation in aerial attacks in the months preceding the elections, it said.
The military increasingly used low-cost paramotors, gyrocopters and drones to conduct low-altitude strikes with unguided explosives, it said, adding that it was investigating incidents in Sagaing Region in which pilots allegedly cut their engines before reaching targets, allowing them to glide silently and giving civilians little warning.
“Communities across Myanmar are not only living under the constant threat of violence but are also coping with the profound and lasting impact of what they have endured,” said Nicholas Koumjian, the IIMM’s head.
Investigators also gathered extensive evidence of arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence in military-run facilities, including alleged physical and sexualised torture and deaths in custody, the IIMM said. Investigators are also examining allegations of conflict-related sexual violence committed by anti-junta armed groups.
Anti-junta groups did not comment on the report’s findings.
Koumjian told reporters it had been challenging collecting evidence but that he hoped international courts would eventually serve justice for victims in Myanmar and “that potential perpetrators know again someone is watching.”
The civil war that has been fought since the 2021 coup against an elected civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has killed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced millions. Tens of thousands of people have been detained since then, the United Nations says.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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