23 May 2026 By Nway
KANPETLET, Myanmar — A strategic mountaintop town in southern Chin State is being rapidly evacuated following an ultimatum by ethnic resistance forces, as intense, close-quarters combat with nearly 1,000 advancing military junta troops rages right at the city’s gates.
Heavy fighting has entered its third consecutive day along the primary access corridor outside Kanpetlet. Military sources within the township confirmed that a massive, reinforced regime column has managed to advance within four miles of the town entrance, triggering high-intensity clashes.
The combat has developed into some of the most brutal infantry engagements seen in the sector this year, with frontline units locked in near-tactical proximity under heavy state air support.
“The frontline is dangerously close to the town perimeter now,” a local military source told MPA on Saturday. “The opposing forces are operating within actual shouting distance of one another—our fighters can literally hear the junta soldiers shouting orders across the ridges. The military high command is backing its ground troops with non-stop airstrikes, alongside heavy commercial drone bombardments. We estimate their combined assault force is now numbering around 1,000 personnel.”
In response to the rapidly dissolving perimeter, Chin revolutionary forces issued a final, strict deadline on Saturday ordering all remaining urban residents to immediately evacuate the township.
“We have told everyone to get out today for their own survival,” the source added. “The vast majority of families had already begun fleeing into the hills over the past 48 hours, so the urban interior is virtually a ghost town now. People are scattering blindly into remote forests looking for safety, and there is an immediate, desperate need for emergency rations, medical kits, and waterproof tarpaulins.”
The humanitarian crisis is being compounded by severe logistical lockdowns implemented to secure tactical borders. The Region 5 People’s Administration released an emergency decree entirely banning civilian traffic along the vital Kanlaung–Anya Katin highway sector, located roughly five miles outside the township center.
Kanpetlet holds immense strategic weight for the opposition movement. A powerful alliance led by the Chin Brotherhood and its regional partners liberated the town from military administration in December 2024. For nearly a year and a half, the town has stood as a critical administrative symbol of resistance governance in the southern Chin Hills.
As the junta high command continues to funnel heavy tactical reinforcements from central Magway bases into the western mountains, military analysts predict the siege of Kanpetlet will develop into a prolonged, bloody war of attrition—severely testing the defensive coordination of ethnic guerrilla alliances against the regime’s vast superiority in airpower.
