UN expert: Myanmar’s desperate military ramps up attacks including beheadings, rapes and torture

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Myanmar’s desperate military junta is ramping up attacks on villages that have fallen to opposition groups. The U.N. independent human rights investigator for Myanmar says the junta carries out beheadings, gang rapes and torture with women, children and the elderly among the victims. Thomas Andrews said in a new report to the General Assembly circulated Friday that the junta has responded to military defeats and the loss of territory by using sophisticated weapons against civilians and seeking to destroy towns that it cannot control. Andrews says the “escalating atrocities” are “being enabled by governments that allow, or actively support, the transfer of weapons, weapons materials, and jet fuel to junta forces.”