Kalay volunteers have brought back villagers displaced by violence between the junta and civilian resistance groups.

“They are in urgent need of warm clothes and blankets, rice, cooking oil and other food rations,” said Puia, one of the volunteers.

He told Khonumthung News that villagers from Hakhalay and Muazawl had asked them to retrieve them from the jungle where they had been hiding since fighting broke out between the Burma Army and allied groups, the Chinland Defence Force and the Kalay People’s Defence Force, in Falam Township in Chin State and in Sagaing Region.

Volunteers collected 121 villagers from Muazawl, 46 from Hakhalay and 3 from Chaung Gwa. Some are staying with their relatives in Kalay, while those who have no family in the capital of Sagaing Region have been provided with food and a place to sleep.

More than a thousand people have taken shelter in Kalay after fighting intensified in the township of the same name. They are in Pinlon, Tat Oo and Nat Myaung Buddhist monasteries or sleeping in churches or Christian schools in the town.

Fighting in the region has increased since the regime launched a clearance campaign to drive out civilian resistance groups that have challenged the dictatorship and inflicted many deaths on the Burma Army, though poorly armed.

According to the Institute of Chin Affairs, the regime has killed 163 ethnic Chin from February to December of last year.

Members of the public wanting to help the civilians in Kalay displaced by the conflict can contact the following numbers +959400507337,+959262286887,+959400309800.