Mandalay International Airport closed for two days following drone strike on Tada-U Air Force Base

The regime in Naypyidaw announced that Mandalay International Airport would be closed for two days on Thursday, from Sept. 10-12, after Mandalay’s Tada-U Air Force base was attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. “The airport was under attack and passengers were injured,” a military officer told DVB on the condition of anonymity without providing a number of casualties. Regime media reported that nobody was injured, but called the attack a “war crime.” Airport officials in Mandalay stated that the attack was carried out by six First-Person View (FPV) “suicide” drones that detonate upon impact. They claimed to have stopped the attack using the air defense system. The airport in Tada-U Township is located 22 miles (35 km) south of Mandalay. Airline services, including the Myanmar Airways International (MAI) and Mingalar Airline, announced the cancellation of all flights into and out of the airport on Sept. 11. Resistance forces claimed that they destroyed two fighter jets on the airport tarmac with drones. A video posted online on Sept. 10 by an unnamed resistance group purportedly shows a drone attacking a Myanmar Air Force fighter jet. “This could go down as the first time that a drone was able to strike a fixed-wing military aircraft stationed at an air force base,” said another group that shares information related to the 2021 military coup following the attack on Sept. 10. It claimed that the Myanmar Air Force fighter jet was a Russian-made YAK-130 combat aircraft worth $15 million USD. Regime authorities in Mandalay carried out raids on homes near the airport, according to Tada-U residents. The post Mandalay International Airport closed for two days following drone strike on Tada-U Air Force Base appeared first on DVB.