Myanmar Confronts Rising Airstrikes and Surge in Illegal Rare Earth Mining

The United Nations warned on Tuesday that daily life for civilians in Myanmar has hit a new low, as a booming conflict economy centered on unregulated rare‑earth mining compounds the suffering inflicted by military violence and widespread abuses by armed groups.

According to a United Nations report released on Tuesday, Myanmar’s military junta is escalating airstrikes and arson attacks to suppress fierce resistance, while also restricting humanitarian aid to exert control over the populace. The junta seized power five years ago by overthrowing the civilian government.

The report further documents the ongoing extreme abuses endured by Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, nine years after a military offensive that the United Nations says killed roughly 10,000 people and forced another 70,000 to flee to Bangladesh.

Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, called on the Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court, describing the situation as “a picture of suffering, misery, and cruelty on multiple levels across the country that is heartbreaking.”

James Rodehaver, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office monitoring Myanmar, told reporters that the military conducted 657 aerial attacks over the past 100 days, resulting in 146 civilian fatalities.

The United Nations estimates that military attacks have claimed at least 8,302 civilian lives since the coup, with at least 1,241 deaths recorded in the first five months of this year—including 382 women and 255 children.

“These figures are certainly an underestimation,” it added.

The report comes nine months after the military junta held a sham election that was widely seen as an attempt to gain legitimacy and break out of its diplomatic isolation.

Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the junta, assumed the post of president and has since traveled in recent weeks to India, China, Thailand and Laos. He also made his fifth visit to Russia since the coup.

Earlier this month, the junta allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the civilian government that was overthrown in February 2020.

She has been largely unseen since the coup, and the junta has refused repeated requests from the U.N. Secretary General’s special envoy to Myanmar and representatives of the Association of South East Asian Nations for permission to see her.

Myanmar also holds at least 14,278 people in detention on political grounds, the U.N. estimates. Although the number of arrests has dropped, the decline appears to be linked to increased forced recruitment into the military.

In Myanmar’s Rakhine state, conditions for the Rohingya are deteriorating amid rampant abuses by both the military and the Arakan Army, a rebel group that now controls most of the area.

Both the military and the Arakan Army are subjecting people there to killings, torture, sexual violence and forced displacement, the United Nations reported.

“Both parties to the conflict committed grave violations against children,” the U.N. said, with children facing violence and forced to fight in the conflict. Children as young as six are also forced to work clearing jungle and constructing buildings, the report said.

Violence and lawlessness across Myanmar have also allowed the development of a thriving illegal economy, the U.N. said. It is built around multibillion dollar online scam operations that are implicated in human trafficking and torture, as well as unregulated mining in Myanmar’s Kachin and Shah states.

Satellite analysis cited by the report showed the number of rare earth mining sites had nearly tripled from 215 before the 2020 coup to 590 by the end of May 2026. Rare earths were mostly sold to China, the report said, with trade peaking at an estimated $1.4 billion in 2023. Recent studies have estimated Myanmar’s rare earth exports at about $625 million, but the report does not explain the significant drop.

Local communities and rights groups said rare earth extraction appeared to be run by foreign interests, the report said, but investigations had found a complex web of interests that allowed subsidiaries of state-owned conglomerates to profit with impunity, leaving local populations to bear most of the economic, environmental and health consequences.

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