The “clearance operation” began at 3 a.m. in western Myanmar, the soldier says.
The colonel in charge told the troops in Myanmar’s 565th light infantry battalion their task was to wipe out the Rohingya villagers in the area, ordering them to “shoot all that you see and all that you hear,” Pvt. Myo Win Tun says in video testimony obtained by NBC News.
His unit carried out the order, the private says, raping women first before killing them along with children and the elderly. The troops buried 30 bodies in a mass grave near a cell phone tower and an army base, the soldier says.
“The Muslim men were shot on their foreheads and kicked into the grave,” the soldier says.
His shocking testimony, along with that of another soldier deployed to a nearby township, marks the first time members of Myanmar’s military have confessed to mass killings in August 2017 that United Nations officials and human rights groups call a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya minority.
