Kyaukphyu Township in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has been engulfed by some of the fiercest fighting in months, after the junta’s declaration of elections in the China-backed investment hub triggered a wave of air and artillery assaults that sent tens of thousands of people fleeing in terror.
What were once narrow front lines—just a few miles from Kyaukphyu town and the Danyawaddy naval base—have exploded outward. Residents describe the battlefield doubling in size almost overnight as the military pours in reinforcements, tanks and aircraft in a desperate attempt to claw back territory from the Arakan Army.
“Minpyin is on fire,” said a person closely connected to the AA to TIMES. “The military keeps pounding the area after retaking Thaing Chaung Taung Mountain. Airstrikes roar daily. It’s relentless.”
On Friday, junta troops captured the AA’s key hilltop camp overlooking Minpyin, then surged toward nearby positions. But the brief victory unraveled within days: the AA swept back into Minpyin, hammering junta bases along the main road that leads straight to Kyaukphyu and its heavily fortified naval headquarters.
“The casualties on the military’s side are enormous,” the source said. “They’ve pulled back in disarray, and the AA is pushing forward again.”
Kyaukphyu—home to a deep-sea port and special economic zone central to China’s Belt and Road ambitions—has become a militarized fortress. More than 1,000 reinforcements have arrived, locals say, joining multiple infantry and naval units. Residents and aid workers claim China is quietly supplying drones and technical expertise to the junta, though this could not be independently verified.
As the fighting escalates, civilians are paying the price. On Monday, a Myanmar military jet dropped bombs on Taungngu village, killing three women and wounding at least five others, two of them children. Hours later, strikes slammed into Kyaukkalay and Leiktin, wiping out a school. Children survived only because they had already been evacuated.
“They targeted the school deliberately,” a Kyaukphyu resident said. “If those kids had been inside, dozens would be dead. The navy shells us every day. No one dares fish anymore. People are paralyzed by fear.”
The humanitarian fallout is spiraling. Entire villages are emptying out. Relief workers estimate as many as 10,000 new refugees have fled in recent days—many for the second or third time—as airstrikes track them from one supposed refuge to another.
“Every time they settle somewhere, the planes come,” one aid worker said. “People carry nothing but their children. They just run.”
Kyaukphyu now holds nearly 50,000 displaced people, aid groups say, overwhelming shelters that lack even basic food and tarpaulin. With the military sealing off the town and choking the flow of goods, prices for rice, fuel and medicine have soared. Households that rely on fishing have lost their only source of income.
A once-quiet coastal township is now a landscape of fear, flight and fire—with no sign that the violence is slowing.
