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Battle of Sittwe

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Battle of Sittwe
Part of Operation 1027 (Rakhine Theatre) in the Myanmar civil war
Date13 November 2023 – ongoing (2 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and 4 days)
Location
Sittwe District, Myanmar
Belligerents
Arakan Army
Commanders and leaders
Major General Kyaw Swar Oo
Lieutenant General Naing Naing Oo[2]
Units involved

 Tatmadaw

 Arakan Army
Strength
2,000 infantry
1,000 naval troops
10 warships[1]		 unknown
Casualties and losses
 Tatmadaw:
240+ killed[4][5]
30+ captured[6]
Multiple injured[7][8]
  • unknown
At least dozens of civilians killed and injured
Over 1,000 residents fled.[9]

In late 2023, the Arakan Army began attacking Sittwe as part of its Operation 1027. By 2026, Sittwe district is the only town in northern Rakhine state which is still under junta control.[10][1][11]

Background

[edit]

The Sittwe township is the capital of Rakhine State which serves as a key city for the SAC. The city plays a vital role in Myanmar's oil and gas trade through the Indian Ocean.[12] Sittwe hosts around 10 junta battalions, including a Regional Operations Command, along with artillery, infantry, and light infantry units, as well as a naval base.[1]

Timeline

[edit]

In March 2023, Myanmar's military imposed curfews in Sittwe amid rising conflict and battles.[13]

On 4 March 2024, the AA announced that it had seized control of Ponnagyun Township.[14][12]

In mid-2024, the military regime forced residents from around 20 villages in Sittwe to use them as “human shields” around its bases.[1]

On 29 August 2024, fighting between the Arakan Army and junta forces erupted largely in the township.[15] The junta used heavy shelling around the region and nearby townships as the AA continued retaliation.[16]

In February 2025, AA launched an artillery assault on the regime outposts in Padaleik and Amyintkyun villages, including a naval base near Shwemingan Port in Sittwe Township which hosts the military's Light Infantry Battalions 232 and 344.[17]

On early 2026, AA captured two military outposts in Sittwe's Regional Operations Command on Kan Kaw Kyun. Military junta forces in Yay Chan Pyin Village were forced to retreat up to the State Parliament office.[2][18][19] On 11 January, the AA announced that their battalion commander Major Htet Myint Thein was killed in action on the frontline of the battle.[3]

Between 1–13 January 2026, multiple junta soldiers in Sittwe Township, including from Ohn Taw Gyi camp, the 270th Battalion, and Police Battalion 36, deserted their posts by abandoning their weapons and fleeing by sea, multiple troops were captured by the AA.[20]

By early March 2026, clashes have been erupting in the military council's Shwe Min Gan Naval Base and some military camps near Zaw Madek.[21][22] On 24 March, the naval base at Shwe Min Gan was attacked from across the river launching assaults from villages, resulting in the deaths of approximately 30 or 40 soldiers.[23] The Kyar Ma Thauk village in the north of Sittwe is also attacked with warships responding from shelling.[24]

As of mid-June 2026, clashes has erupted to Naryikan village, which is around a mile from Sittwe town and its regional operational command.[25][26]

On 4 September, the junta launched an offensive dubbed "Operation 4926," of which one portion involved an offensive out of Sittwe. This included an increase of airstrikes in Pyauktaw Township.[27][28] The Arakan Army claimed that around 200 junta troops were killed between 4 September and 11 September near Khamaungtaw and Ywarbo, around 20 kilometers north of Sittwe.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Thit, Lin (2026-03-02). "Arakan Army Advances to Edge of Sittwe as Fighting Intensifies". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  2. 1 2 "AA seizes key outposts near Sittwe as battle for Rakhine capital intensifies". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  3. 1 2 "စစ်တွေတိုက်ပွဲတွင် AA တပ်ရင်းမှူး ဗိုလ်မှူးထက်မြင့်သိန်း ကျဆုံး". DVB. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  4. ↑ "စစ်တွေ တိုက်ပွဲတွင် စစ်ကောင်စီဘက်က ၄၀ ခန့် သေဆုံး". ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် စစ်တွေမြို့နယ်မှာ မတ် ၁၁ ရက်နေ့ မနက်က စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်နဲ့ အာရက္ခတပ်တော် (AA) တို့ တိုက်ပွဲဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ပြီး စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်သား ၄၀ လောက် သေဆုံးကာ အများအပြား ဒဏ်ရာရရှိခဲ့တယ်လို့ AA နဲ့ နီးစပ်သူတ…. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  5. ↑ "Intense fighting erupts as military junta renews offensive in Sittwe Township". Narinjara News. 2026-09-12. Retrieved 2026-09-12.
  6. ↑ "စစ်တွေ တိုက်ပွဲ အစကောင်းတယ်လို့ AA ပြော". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 2024-09-04. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  7. ↑ "စစ်တွေပွဲဦးထွက်တိုက်ပွဲတွင် စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်သား ၃၀ ကျော်သေဆုံးပြီး လက်နက်၅၀ ကျော် သိမ်းဆည်းရမိကြောင်း AA အတည်ပြု". burmese.narinjara.com (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  8. ↑ "AA snipers kill more soldiers in Sittwe, prompting greater number, including Muslim militants, to flee". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  9. ↑ "Over 1,000 civilians flee Sittwe amid tension between Myanmar junta and ethnic army". Radio Free Asia. 2025-01-31. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  10. ↑ "What's happening on the Sittwe battlefield?". narinjara.com. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  11. ↑ "လေကြောင်းဖြင့် ပစ်ကူပေးရသည်အထိ စစ်တွေတိုက်ပွဲ ပြင်းထန်လာ". Development Media Group (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  12. 1 2 "The Looming Battle for Sittwe". csis.org. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  13. ↑ "Myanmar junta imposes curfew in Sittwe amid surge in rebel-led fighting". The Daily Star. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  14. ↑ "AA Seizes Ponnagyun Township Near Sittwe -Rakhine's Capital". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  15. ↑ "AA and Junta troops start fighting in Sittwe Township, Arakan(Rakhine) State". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  16. ↑ "Junta Intensifies Heavy Shelling Following Battle Near Sittwe City in Rakhine State". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  17. ↑ "Arakan Army launches artillery strike on regime outposts in Rakhine State capital Sittwe". DVB. 2025-02-09. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  18. ↑ "Armed clashes reported around Sittwe". Burma News International. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  19. ↑ "AA commandos capture two outposts at Sittwe Regional Command Headquarters". narinjara.com. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  20. ↑ "Over 50 soldiers desert army bases in Sittwe within 15 days". narinjara.com. Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  21. ↑ "စစ်တွေ ရွှေမင်းဂံရေတပ်ကို AA ထိုးစစ်ဆင်နေ". Development Media Group (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-03-03.
  22. ↑ "စစ်တွေ တွင် AA နှင့် စစ်ကော်မရှင်တပ်တို့ တိုက်ပွဲများ ဆက်တိုက်ဖြစ်ပွား". Mizzima (in Burmese).
  23. ↑ "Arakan Army intensifies siege of Sittwe and Kyaukphyu as fighting reaches strategic naval bases". Mizzima.
  24. ↑ Thit, Lin (2026-06-02). "Arakan Army Surrounds Myanmar's Western Naval Bases, Sparking Intense Battles". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2026-06-10.
  25. ↑ လင်းသစ် (2026-06-11). "စစ်တွေ ဒကစနှင့် တမိုင်ကျော်အကွာ နာရီကန်ရွာအနီး တိုက်ပွဲ ရောက်လာ". ဧရာဝတီ. Retrieved 2026-06-12.
  26. ↑ Thit, Lin (2026-06-12). "AA Steps Up Assault on Myanmar Regime Naval Base Near Sittwe". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2026-06-12.
  27. ↑ Thit, Lin (2026-09-09). "Major Regime Offensive to Retake Territory From AA Stumbles". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2026-09-13.
  28. ↑ "Intense fighting erupts as military junta renews offensive in Sittwe Township". Narinjara News. Retrieved 2026-09-13.

20°9′N 92°54′E / 20.150°N 92.900°E / 20.150; 92.900

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