Resistance members Naw Eh Moo, Naw Lu Lu Phaw and Ko Kyaw Gyi who were killed in an ambush by junta forces in Myawaddy Township on Tuesday.
Three resistance fighters from the Cobra Column, an ethnic Karen resistance force, were killed in an ambush by Myanmar junta troops in Karen State on Tuesday.
Naw Eh Moo, 28, renowned as effective under fire and a kind comrade, was killed, alongside Naw Lu Lu Phaw, 22, and Ko Kyaw Gyi, 20.
Her logistics team was ambushed on the Myawaddy-Wal Lay highway on Tuesday afternoon in a vehicle carrying rations to the frontline.
During the ambush, regime forces also attacked a vehicle of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a civilian vehicle and four civilian trucks carrying millet, said the Cobra Column.
A Cobra Column commander told The Irrawaddy: “We have had to pass through a night without a moon with these deaths during our revolution for the country.
“But we have to stay alive and keep fighting to uproot the dictatorship,” the resistance leader said.
Naw Eh Moo joined the Cobra Column last year and was also connected to the Karen National Union (KNU) Brigade 1.
She showed great spirit during heavy fighting and transported food and other necessities to frontline fighters, he said.
“She had a determined, extreme spirit in the revolution. She performed her logistical duties amid fierce clashes while bullets were flying,” the commander added.
She supplied Cobra troops with uniforms, equipment and medicines.
“She was more than just a logistical supplier. She sent food boxes to the bunkers at the frontline. She provided all the necessities to our comrades and contributed to other sectors in the revolution,” Myo Thura Ko Ko of the Cobra Column told The Irrawaddy.
Following Tuesday’s clash, fierce clashes broke out when the Cobra Column attacked regime forces while retrieving dead and injured resistance fighters trapped at the ambush site.
Junta troops nearby used 120mm shells, rockets and a Russian-made Mi-35 helicopter to attack the Cobra Column.
Five regime troops, including an officer, had been killed and 17 others injured by Wednesday, the resistance group claimed.
On Wednesday morning, the Cobra Column evacuated eight injured comrades and the three bodies, the group said.
The Cobra Column is also known as Battalion 27 of the Karen National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the KNU.
It has become well-known for its daring near-daily attacks on regime forces in Karen State.
Fighting has been particularly heavy in Myawaddy Township with the junta using large numbers of troops and heavy weaponry in their attempt to reoccupy the Myawaddy-Wal Lay highway and Thay Bow Boe camp, a key outpost seized by resistance groups.
The KNLA and allied resistance forces seized Thay Baw Boe in May amid heavy junta airstrikes.
Until October, the KNU reported around 6,947 clashes with regime forces in its territory in which an estimated 5,854 junta soldiers and allied border militia members were killed and 4,748 injured since the coup last year.
In October, six resistance fighters were killed and 46 others injured in Karen territory, said the KNU.
