YANGON, Myanmar: More than 100,000 people have been killed across all sides in Myanmar since a military coup five years ago triggered civil war, a conflict monitor said on Wednesday.
Since the February 2021 putsch there have been 100,114 “conflict-related fatalities” according to Sun Mon Thant, a senior analyst from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), which tallies media reports of violence.
There is no official toll and estimates vary widely, but analysts regard the half-decade civil war as the deadliest active conflict in Asia.
The military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, detaining the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ending Myanmar´s decade-long experiment with democracy.
Security forces put down anti-putsch protests but activists quit the cities to form pro-democracy guerrilla groups, fighting alongside ethnic minority armies which have long resisted central rule.More than 3.7 million people are internally displaced in Myanmar, according to the United Nations, and more than one in five face acute food insecurity as the country slides back into poverty.
In the largest city, Yangon, violence can take the form of occasional assassinations.
Other places are riven by entrenched warfare or pounded by daily airstrikes by the military´s Russian- and Chinese-supplied jets.
Myanmar was the second-most conflict-hit area in the world last year, according to ACLED, behind only the Palestinian territories.
ACLED has registered more than 1,200 distinct armed groups in the civil war, calling it “the most fragmented conflict in the world”.
“It´s deadly, it´s dangerous to civilians, the conflict has spread across the whole country,” said ACLED senior analyst Su Mon.
