In Mandalay Region's Taungtha Township, local residents have fled their homes after soldiers occupied the village following the assassination of a junta-appointed local administrator on Monday morning.
According to eyewitnesses, Myint Nwe, the village administrator, was shot in the head while he was at home by an unknown gunman.
The assailant entered the house and shot the victim once in the forehead, according to the eyewitness.
Soon after the murder at 10 am, eight military vehicles arrived on the scene. According to an eyewitness, they immediately fired their weapons into the air and detonated flash grenades.
As a result, villagers fled Hpayar Hla for safer locations.
Myint Nwe began serving as the village administrator under the coup regime just two months ago.
In the opinion of another resident of Hpaya Hla, Myint Nwe assisted the military junta in arresting other members of the village.
"He's famous around here," he said, adding that locals saw Myint Nwe leading plainclothes troops in the arrest of a villager at 5 am on the same day as he died.
Soldiers occupied Hpayar Hla and searched for fleeing villagers.
The Taungtha Guerilla Task Force clai
med responsibility for Myint Nwe's assassination on Monday afternoon.
Resistance groups have occasionally targeted suspected military collaborators and informants in Taungtha in recent months. During such attacks, a clerk in a general administration office under the junta and the junta-appointed administrator of Yone Si Gyi village were shot and killed.
In mid-June, the owner of an electronics shop in Taungtha was critically wounded after being shot in the back and the chest for allegedly serving as an informant.
A 38-year-old Taungtha man, Myo Myint Than, died in regime custody less than 24 hours after troops arrested him as a suspect in the murder of the shop owner.

 This post is ad-supported
​