A fighter jet has crashed in eastern Myanmar amid increasing pressure from anti-coup forces on the generals who seized power in a coup in 2021.<\/p>\n
The Sit-Tat jet crashed in Kayah State near the border with Thailand on Saturday with the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) claiming it had shot down the plane.<\/p>\n
However, military spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told state-run MRTV the aircraft came down because of a technical issue and that both pilots ejected safely. He said it had been on a training flight.<\/p>\n
The crash comes with the military facing the most serious challenge from anti-coup forces since it seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.<\/p>\n
An alliance of ethnic armed groups in northern Shan state launched an offensive two weeks ago that has captured a series of towns and dozens of military outposts near the border with China, emboldening groups in other parts of Myanmar to step up their campaigns against the generals.<\/p>\n
About 50,000 people have been displaced in Shan State, and 40,000 in neighbouring Sagaing and Kachin states, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n
A statement posted on the KNDF\u2019s Facebook page said fire from heavy machine guns hit the fighter in its fuselage and a wing before it crashed far from the battlefield leaving a trail of smoke.<\/p>\n
The KNDF and the Karenni Army \u2014 the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party \u2014 credited their members for bringing down the plane.<\/p>\n
Source: Al Jazeera<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A fighter jet has crashed in eastern Myanmar amid increasing pressure from anti-coup forces on the generals who seized power in a coup in 2021. The Sit-Tat jet crashed in Kayah State near the border with Thailand on Saturday with the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) claiming it had shot down the plane. However, military […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":422007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-422005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422008,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422005\/revisions\/422008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}