Myanmar airstrike on crowded market kills 50 near Bangladesh border

Around midday on Monday, jets from Myanmar's military struck a crowded riverside market in Kyauktaw, a town in Rakhine state near the Bangladesh border. Fifty people were killed and at least 58 wounded, many of them critically. Women and children were among the dead.

The market held more than 200 shops and drew people from several communities — Rakhine, Rohingya, Hindu, and Daingnet. The Arakan Army, the armed group that controls the area and is battling the military, said the strike deliberately targeted densely populated markets, schools, and residential buildings. A local aid worker confirmed the casualty figures. The UN human rights office said the death toll was expected to rise.

It was the deadliest attack in Rakhine since a hospital bombing in December killed at least 30. Days later, further airstrikes hit displacement camps in the state, killing eight more.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the strike and called on all sides to end the violence, protect civilians, and comply with international law. His spokesperson said the continuing bloodshed showed that conditions do not exist for the safe return of refugees — including the Rohingya sheltering in Bangladesh — to Myanmar.

Step back and the scale is hard to absorb: Myanmar has been in civil war since the 2021 military coup. Around 100,000 people have been killed and more than 3.5 million displaced. It is one of the deadliest ongoing conflicts on earth, and one of the least covered. Fifty dead in a marketplace barely registers in Western news cycles. That silence is itself part of the story.