Myanmar’s military has launched airstrikes on camps for internally displaced people in Rakhine State, killing at least eight people and leaving more injured, according to a local ethnic rebel organization.

The Arakan Army (AA), a Rakhine nationalist group that controls much of the state in western Myanmar, said yesterday that a Y12 aircraft bombed a displacement shelter and a nearby village in AA-controlled Ponnagyun Township, The Irrawaddy reported. One civilian was killed and two injured in the attack, it added.

This came after six were killed in an air attack on a separate displacement camp in the township on Sunday night, the AA claimed. Several more were injured in the attack, which also destroyed buildings.

The two attacks were also confirmed by ​the Ponnagyun Youth Association, which told Reuters that everyone killed or injured was a “displaced civilian.”

“Attacking these civilian targets with aircraft was a deliberative move,” Wai Hun Aung, a prominent Rakhine writer and aid worker, told The Irrawaddy, adding that the camps were located far from the active combat zone in Rakhine State.

This week’s airstrikes are just the latest to take place in Rakhine, as the Myanmar armed forces attempt to claw back territory from the AA. Much of the state has fallen under the control of the AA since late 2023, when the group and its allies launched an offensive known as Operation 1027. The military has only a few precarious footholds in the state now, including the state capital Sittwe and several other coastal areas. As it has done in other parts of Myanmar, it has begun to lean heavily on its air power to punish civilian populations and stave off further losses.

The attacks came a week after a major aerial attack in neighboring Kyauktaw township on September 28, which killed 50 people and wounded at least ​58, according to the AA and other local sources. In December, an attack on a hospital in Mrauk U township killed at least 30 people.

The attacks indicate that despite the efforts of the new quasi-civilian government to project a sense of stability and normalcy, the situation in much of the country is unstable. Since taking office as president in April, coup leader-turned-President Min Aung Hlaing has launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at normalizing Myanmar’s relations with its neighbors. This includes the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has excluded Myanmar from its summits since late 2021 over its failure to implement the bloc’s Five-Point Consensus conflict resolution plan.

In a response to the September 28 attack, the Philippines, ASEAN’s current chair, said that it was “closely monitoring developments” and expressed “concern” over the attacks, ​Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary for ASEAN Affairs Ana Marie ​Hernando told Reuters on Saturday. The air strike was also condemned by U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk.

While Myanmar’s military has recently succeeded in halting the loss of territory to ethnic armed groups and other resistance factions, nearly 3.8 million people remain displaced across the country, according to the United Nations, and the central state’s hold on much of the country remains either loose or non-existent.

With the failure of a recent military offensive aimed at seizing territory around Sittwe, the Myanmar armed forces will likely compensate by relying ever more heavily on the use of air power in Rakhine State.