At least 170 killed in air strikes during Myanmar’s widely criticised election, UN says

BBC:

At least 170 people were killed in military air strikes during Myanmar’s weeks’ long election period, the United Nations has said.

“Credible sources” had counted the civilian deaths, the UN rights office said, as well as 408 military aerial attacks from December 2025 to late last week, when the third and final round of voting was held.

The election itself has already been widely denounced as a sham, by numerous countries and human rights groups.

The Union and Solidarity Party (USDP), backed by Myanmar’s military, won an overwhelming victory, according to state media – an outcome which was expected following the tightly-controlled vote.

Voting was not possible in large parts of the country, which has been engulfed in civil war sparked by a military coup which saw the democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi ousted and imprisoned in 2021.

Her party, the National League for Democracy, which won landslides in the two elections prior to the coup, was not allowed to contest the vote.

Many believe the military junta will use the vote to maintain its power through proxy political parties.

UN rights chief Volker Turk described the election as “staged by the military” in a statement released on Friday.

He pointed out that “opposition candidates and some ethnic groups were excluded” from standing in the election, which had its first round on 28 December.

Turk added that people had made decisions “to vote or not to vote purely out of fear, flatly at odds with their internationally guaranteed civil and political rights”.

Meanwhile, “the conflict and insecurity continued unabated in large parts of the country”.

James Rodehaver, head of UN Human Rights’ Myanmar team, said the figures on civilian deaths in military strikes were drawn from the period between the start of campaigning, in December, to the final voting day in late January.

The figures, which came from open sources, are likely to be currently incomplete “because of the way in which communications are cut off and… the fear of individuals in some of these locations to speak to us”, he added, according to news agency AFP.