The Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) stated that the regime in Naypyidaw is sabotaging “union-building efforts” made by ethnic armed resistance forces during a speech to mark the 66th anniversary of the KIO on Sunday.
“The military regime does not want a strong federal union to emerge or the people to prosper and develop. It carries out daily airstrikes and artillery attacks against towns and villages, homes…schools, hospitals, clinics, and religious buildings,” said N’Ban La, the KIO chairperson, on Oct. 25.
He added that fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Shanni Nationalities Army (SNA) is a result of the regime “sowing divisions” between the ethnic Shan and Kachin communities.
The SNA has been assisting the regime counteroffensive against the KIA since late 2022 in Kachin’s Mohnyin, Mogaung, and Hpakant townships as well as in Sagaing’s Homalin, Banmauk, Pinlebu, Hpaungpyin, Tamu, Kalay, Mawlaik and Indaw townships.
The SNA, which was established on July 5, 1989, has an estimated 1,000 troops across four brigades along the Kachin-Sagaing corridor, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP-Myanmar).
Its main political objective is to establish a “Shanni State” in Sagaing’s Kalay, Hkamti, Mawlaik, Katha and Tamu townships and Kachin’s Bhamo, Myitkyina, Mohnyin and Mogaung townships.
At least one civilian was killed in airstrikes in Sagaing’s Homalin Township, located 333 miles (535 km) north of the region’s capital Monywa, on Oct. 19.
The KIA seized control of two SNA outposts in Homalin on Oct. 18-19. No casualties were reported during its offensive against the SNA, which began in early October.
Homalin residents told DVB that fighting between the KIA and regime forces has been going on in the town and in neighbouring Kachin’s Hpakant Township for over a week.
Hpakant, located 94-158 miles (151-254 km) west and northwest of the state capital Myitkyina and the KIA headquarters of Laiza, has been contested since June 2025.
The KIA has seized Kachin’s Sumprabum, Injangyang, and the lucrative rare earth mining towns of Chipwi, Pangwa and Tsawlaw, as well as northern Shan State’s Mabein Township, since it launched its statewide offensive on March 7, 2024.
The KIO, founded on Oct. 25, 1960, is one of the four ethnic armed groups who established the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF)—Myanmar’s premier resistance coalition—on March 30.
