Click to expand Image A tourist paramotor in China. © VCGPIX via AP Photo On Monday evening, Myanmar military paramotors, or motorized paragliders, dropped munitions on a candlelit Buddhist festival in Sagaing Region, killing at least 21 people, including three children as young as 2. Hundreds of villagers had gathered in a primary school compound to celebrate the Thadingyut holiday and demonstrate against military abuses in the embattled region.Junta airstrikes have surged this year, including unlawful attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure – schools, hospitals, religious sites, and displacement camps – killing and wounding thousands. Some of these strikes appear to be deliberate attacks on civilians intended as a form of collective punishment in areas that support opposition armed groups.The laws of war prohibit attacks that do not or cannot discriminate between civilians and combatants.The junta’s increasing use of armed paramotors – from which pilots drop 120mm mortar rounds “without any capacity for precision targeting,” according to the United Nations – has created grave new threats to civilians. More than 135 paramotor attacks have been reported since December 2024.Monday’s attack in Sagaing’s Chaung-U township marks the deadliest paramotor strike to date. An opposition alert that paramotors had left the nearby Northwestern Regional Military Command came less than 10 minutes before the strike, leaving little time for people to seek cover. “As of this morning, we were still collecting body parts from the ground,” a witness told AFP the day after the attack.More than 40 people were reportedly injured, including at least 20 children, many severely. The junta’s blockade on humanitarian aid has impeded access to desperately needed medicine and blood transfusions for the wounded.Aid blockages sustain the military’s longstanding “four cuts” strategy – designed to isolate and terrorize civilians – while contravening the December 2022 UN Security Council resolution and ASEAN’s 2021 five-point consensus. At the ASEAN summit starting October 26, member states should seek ways to pressure the junta to allow civilians unfettered access to aid in contested areas.To cut off Myanmar’s military from the revenue funding its atrocities, governments should expand and fully enforce sanctions as well as coordinate a ban on the sale of aviation fuel. Nearly five years since the February 2021 coup, the junta has yet to face genuine consequences for its ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Until it does, unlawful attacks against civilians can be expected to continue.