An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group killed about 40 people and injured at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity said Thursday. They said hundreds of houses burned in a fire triggered by the bombing.

The attack occurred Wednesday in Kyauk Ni Maw village on Ramree island, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army in western Rakhine state, they said. The military has not announced any attack in the area.

The situation in the village could not be independently confirmed, with access to the internet and cellphone service in the area mostly cut off.

Myanmar is wracked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After the army used lethal force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, many opponents of military rule took up arms and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press that a jet fighter bombed the village on Wednesday afternoon, killing 40 civilians and injuring more than 20 others.

“All the dead were civilians. Among the dead and injured are women and children,” Khaing Thukha said. A fire started by the airstrike spread through the village, destroying more than 500 houses, Khaing Thukha added.

It was unclear why the village was targeted. The leader of a local charity group and independent media also reported the airstrike and casualties.

The military government has stepped up airstrikes over the past three years on armed pro-democracy groups collectively known as the People’s Defense Force and on armed ethnic minority groups that have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. The two groups sometimes carry out joint operations against the army.

Ramree – 340 kilometers (210 miles) northwest of Yangon, the country’s largest city – was captured by the Arakan Army in March last year.

The Arakan Army is the well-trained and well-armed military wing of the Rakhine ethnic minority movement which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. It is also a member of an alliance of armed ethnic groups that recently gained strategic territory in the country’s northeast on the border with China.

It began its offensive in Rakhine in November 2023 and has now gained control of a strategically important regional army headquarters and 14 of Rakhine’s 17 townships, leaving only the state’s capital, Sittwe, and two important townships near Ramree still in military government hands.

A leader of the charity group, which has been assisting residents of the village, told AP on Thursday that at least 41 people were killed and 50 others were injured in the airstrike, which targeted the village’s market.

The leader, who was away from the town at the time of the airstrike, spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. He said he received the information from members of his group who were in the village and were facing a shortage of medicine to treat the injured people.

Rakhine-based news outlets including Arakan Princess Media also reported the attack and posted photos online showing people putting out fires at their homes.

Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, was the site of a brutal army counterinsurgency operation in 2017 that drove about 740,000 minority Rohingya Muslims to seek safety across the border in Bangladesh.

Rescue crews found the body of a British hiker buried in the snow of the Italian Alps and were continuing to search for his friend, who had also been missing since January 1, Italy’s rescue services said Wednesday.

Italy’s Alpine rescue service said it only received an alert about the men on January 6, five days after the men set out in the Adamello range near Trento, after they failed to make a scheduled flight home and relatives contacted authorities.

After the first two days of searches were hampered by snowfall, fog and avalanche warnings, rescue crews managed to get a helicopter in the air Wednesday and ground crews reached the pair’s last recorded location.

Guided by the hikers’ phone recordings, crews found the men’s backpacks and equipment, as well as the body of one of the hikers buried in the snow, the rescuers said in a statement.

British media quoted relatives and partners of the two men, Aziz Ziriat, 36, and Sam Harris, 35, as saying they were experienced hikers who had planned a New Year’s Day excursion, hiking from mountain hut to mountain hut.

“It wasn’t surprising that they had no signal as they like going off the grid,” said a university friend of Ziriat, Joe Stone.

A helicopter attempted a flyover on Tuesday, but fog and poor visibility forced it to return before reaching the affected valley and the search was suspended, the rescue crews said.

Additionally, ground crews of the fire rescue service were unable to work due to high risks of avalanches.

The Adamello range straddles Italy’s Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige regions and includes the highest peak, Mt. Adamello, at 3,539 meters (11,611 feet.)

African governments have criticized a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he said that some leaders showed “ingratitude” for the deployment of his nation’s troops in the Sahel region in battling Islamist extremism.

Macron told French ambassadors at a conference in Paris on Monday that Sahel nations – beset by civil conflicts and violent extremism – only remained sovereign because of the deployment of French forces.

Macron also dismissed the notion that French troops had been expelled from the Sahel, an area that sits just below the Sahara Desert, as Paris’ influence on its former colonies wanes.

“We had a security relationship. It was in two folds: One was our commitment against terrorism since 2013. I think someone forgot to say thank you. It does not matter, it will come with time,” Macron said at the conference.

“Ingratitude, I am well placed to know, is a disease not transmissible to man.”

Macron’s comments were denounced by Chad’s foreign affairs minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, who accused the French leader of showing “a contemptuous attitude towards Africa and Africans.”

The French leader blamed the exit of his country’s forces from the region on successive coups.

“We left because there were coups d’état. We were there at the request of sovereign states that had asked France to come. From the moment there were coups d’état, and when people said ‘our priority is no longer the fight against terrorism’… France no longer had a place there because we are not the auxiliaries of putschists. So, we left.”

In recent years, French troops have withdrawn from Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali following coups in the West African nations where anti-French sentiment has become rife. They are also preparing their exit from Chad, Ivory Coast and Senegal. French forces similarly left the Central African Republic in 2022 after deploying there in 2013 following a coup that sparked a civil war.

“None of them would be a sovereign country today if the French army had not deployed in the region,” Macron said, adding: “My heart goes out to all our soldiers who sometimes gave their lives and fought for years. We did well.”

Koulamallah said in a statement that, “France has never endowed the Chadian army in a significant way nor contributed to its structural development.” The Chadian minister added: “In 60 years of existence, marked by civil wars, rebellions and prolonged political instability, French contribution has often been limited to its own strategic interests, with no real lasting impact on the development of the Chadian people.”

Chad announced in November it was ending its defense cooperation with France to reassert its sovereignty.

Macron insisted in his address on Monday that France’s influence was not in decline in Africa but that the nation was only “reorganizing itself” on the continent.

His stance was rejected by Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko who explained in a statement Monday that Senegal’s decision to close all foreign military bases, including those of the French, “stems from its sole will, as a free, independent and sovereign country,” adding there were “no discussions or negotiations” with the French.

“Let us note that France has neither the capacity nor the legitimacy to ensure Africa’s security and sovereignty,” Sonko stated.

Activists in Africa were also outraged over Macron’s comments.

“Macron’s statement that African leaders should be grateful for France’s military interventions, claiming that West Africa’s sovereignty owes its existence to the French army, reeks of revisionism and intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy,” Togolese writer and social activist Farida Bemba Nabourema wrote in a lengthy post on X.

“This paternalistic rhetoric, which infantilizes African nations as incapable of self-governance, is deeply rooted in the racism that justified colonization in the first place and continues to nourish neo-colonialism today,” Nabourema added.

Sahel aligns with Russia

Russian military support has become an increasingly sought-after alternative by some Sahel nations who have moved on from their former Western partners.

Junta-led Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have since signed military partnerships with Moscow, receiving contingents of Russian military instructors from the shadowy mercenary group, Wagner.

Wagner forces have also reportedly arrived in Equatorial Guinea where they are tasked with protecting its authoritarian leader President Teodoro Obiang, mirroring the activities of the Russian mercenaries in the neighboring Central African Republic where they have evolved into the dominant foreign force.