Two bombs fell from a jet over Mrauk-U at 9:13 p.m. on Wednesday, 10 December 2025. One landed on the recovery ward of the town’s general hospital, the other beside the main building. Thirty-four patients and medical staff died, rescue official Wai Hun Aung told The Associated Press. About 80 other people were hurt.
Wai Hun Aung, a senior official with rescue services in Rakhine, reached the hospital early Thursday. He counted 17 women and 17 men among the dead. Most of the hospital building was destroyed, and taxis and motorbikes parked nearby were damaged as well. Rakhine-based online media posted photos and video of wrecked buildings and debris that included medical equipment.
The Times of India, citing AFP, quoted him earlier in the count, when the numbers were lower. “The situation is very terrible,” he said. “As for now, we can confirm there are 31 deaths and we think there will be more deaths.” His early figure for the wounded was 68. The final tally he gave AP was 34 dead.
The military, which took power in a 2021 coup, has said nothing about any attack in the area.
The only hospital still working
Wai Hun Aung described the hospital as the main source of health care in Rakhine, where most hospitals have shut because of the civil war. It had reopened after doctors gathered in Mrauk-U to provide medical services.
The town is 326 miles (530 km) northwest of Yangon. It sits in territory held by the Arakan Army, the armed wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement, which wants autonomy within Myanmar. The group captured Mrauk-U in February 2024. It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has since taken a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships.
Rakhine, once known as Arakan, was also where an army counterinsurgency campaign in 2017 sent about 740,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh. Tension between the Buddhist Rakhine and the Rohingya has not gone away.
Air campaign before the vote
Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, set up by elected lawmakers who were blocked from taking their seats in 2021, condemned the strike. It asked the international community to press the military to stop, to act against those responsible and to send humanitarian aid quickly.
Conflict monitors say the junta has flown more air strikes each year since the civil war began. The military has stepped up attacks on the People’s Defense Force, the armed pro-democracy group closely tied to the NUG, ahead of elections planned for 28 December. Opponents say the polls will be neither free nor fair and are meant to legitimize army rule. The military calls the vote an off-ramp from the fighting, while rebels have vowed to block it in areas they hold.
A week earlier, an air strike on a tea shop in Sagaing region in upper-central Myanmar killed at least 18 civilians and wounded 20, a local villager and independent online media reported.
Sources
- An airstrike on a hospital in a rebel-controlled area of Myanmar kills 34 and injures 80 – DVB
- Myanmar military strike: Attack on Mrauk-U hospital leaves 34 dead; civil war intensifies – The Times of India
Sources
- An airstrike on a hospital in a rebel-controlled area of Myanmar kills…
- Myanmar military strike: Attack on Mrauk-U hospital leaves 34 dead…
