YANGON: Myanmar authorities have arrested 16 people, including a six-year-old girl, over the assassination of a retired general shot dead in Yangon last month.

Cho Tun Aung, a former ambassador to Cambodia, was gunned down outside his home on May 22 in an attack claimed by an anti-junta group calling itself the “Golden Valley Warriors”.

Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup, plunging the country into a complex, multi-sided civil war involving pro-democracy guerillas and resurgent ethnic minority armed groups.

Most fighting is confined to the countryside and smaller towns, but grenade and gun attacks on junta-linked targets are regularly reported in Yangon, the country’s largest city and commercial hub.

The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said 16 members of the Golden Valley Warriors had been arrested in various locations.

The persons arrested include the wife and six-year-old daughter of the suspected shooter, identified as Myo Ko Ko, the state-run newspaper said, without explaining what the girl is accused of. The report said Myo Ko Ko and another suspect rode to the general’s home on bicycles and shot him before fleeing to a safe house.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2025