By AFP and Focus | 2025-10-13

THABEIKKYIN, Burma -- Before a Burmese student descends into a classroom entombed in a concrete bunker, she prays for compassion and her community's safety, knowing her appeal will go unanswered.

"May the fighter jets not come. May the pilots show kindness to us. May the bombs not explode," 18-year-old Phyo Phyo said, recalling her unspoken wishes.

She is enrolled in a class of about a dozen at the subterranean academy, founded in June after a junta strike obliterated a nearby school and killed at least 20 pupils and two teachers, according to witnesses.

"Our school days used to be free and full of fun," said Phyo Phyo, a pseudonym used for security reasons.

"Ever since the air strikes started, we've lost our happiness," she added. "The students have grown quiet."

Burma's military has increased air strikes every year since it triggered civil war with a 2021 coup, conflict monitors say, a response to guerrilla factions opposed besieging its ground forces.

China's strategic backing

China is increasing its support for Burma's military junta to protect its economic interests, according to the Stimson Center, amid rising casualties from air strikes and the junta's fight against resistance forces.

"China's support for the junta has not only not abated, but expanded, as it desperately tries to shore up an economically incompetent and militarily over-stretched junta," the think tank said in March.

"The most important assistance that Beijing is providing is in the military realm, including arms sales, drone technology, the deployment of technicians to defense industries ... and the blocking of dual-use exports to the opposition."

A Burma junta spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The junta is waging a campaign to recapture territory ahead of elections it has said will start on December 28.

But rebels have pledged to block the polls in their enclaves, and analysts describe the vote as a ploy to disguise the continuation of military rule.

In a rebel-held jungle, around 110km north of Mandalay city where junta jets scour the skies, Phyo Phyo and her classmates learn in their dank, dark classroom.

It was built underground with donations and resembles a spartan prison cell.

"We want education, no matter the obstacles," Phyo Phyo said.

Junta unable to win on ground

Bowing her head to study Burmese literature, her favorite subject, the teenager is watched over by a poster of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader ousted by the military in February 2021.

Democracy activists then formed guerrilla units and found common cause with myriad ethnic minority armed groups, which have long fought for self-rule.

Their scattered organization failed to make much headway until a combined offensive starting in late 2023.

The back-footed military then stepped up its aerial campaign using China- and Russia-supplied jets against rebels who possess neither their own air fleets nor anti-air defenses.

"The reason they use air strikes is they feel our revolutionary armed groups have the power to take them down," said Zaw Tun, a member of the democracy movement's self-declared National Unity Government in a rebel-held area of northern Sagaing region.

"They can't win the ground battle, but they have the power to attack us with air strikes," he said.

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) noted the military's increasing reliance on air power, including new paramotor tactics capable of carrying 120mm mortar rounds to strike civilian and earthquake-affected areas.

An earthquake struck Burma in March, compounding the population's misery.

Carnage from the skies

Almost half of all verified civilian deaths between April 2024 and May 2025 resulted from the regime's aerial attacks.

Rarely a week passes without civilians being killed in a mass-casualty bombing, often of schools or monasteries occupied by children or monks, and sometimes also sheltering civilians already displaced by fighting.

"The military targets crowds intentionally because they want to incite fear," said Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) Asia-Pacific analyst Su Mon Thant.

But while "superior power in the air" allows the military to stave off defeat, she said, it is not enough to secure victory.

Estimates for Burma's war losses vary widely. The OHCHR reported in September that at least 6,764 civilians have been killed and over 29,000 politically arrested since the coup.

However, ACLED reports a broader toll of more than 85,000 deaths on all sides of the conflict.

Under cover of darkness

To survive constant junta air raid threats, rice farmers in Sagaing region tend their fields at night.

In Mandalay's Thabeikkyin township, rebels eyeball the skies and use walkie-talkies to warn of incoming jets.

Thwat Lat sounds a siren up to 15 times a day, sending residents fleeing to bunkers. "Every time a person's life is saved, I feel what I'm doing is worthwhile," he said during one of his recent 19-hour shifts.

But bunkers and siloed schools cannot protect their occupants from psychological wounds.

"I have no words to express how nervous I am," said Khin Tint, 67.

"Sometimes I think I am already dead but my heart is still pounding."