She died in her father’s arms on the way to the clinic.
At just 7 years old, Khin Myo Chit became the youngest victim of Myanmar’s increasingly bloody coup Tuesday, gunned down by security forces at her home in the northern city of Mandalay.
“They brought her to me,” her father, U Maung Ko Hashin Bai, told U.K. broadcaster Sky News Wednesday. “I was carrying her and running in the street. She died on the way, she didn't even reach the clinic." (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.)
Hashin Bai said they heard gunfire outside their home and then armed men came into the house. “They broke the doors and they were shooting inside,” he said.
As the men began beating up his son, he said, Khin Myo Chit, the youngest of his eight children, “was really scared.”
“They were saying, ‘this is not scary’ and then they started shooting again,” he added.
As she ran toward him, Hashin Bai said, the men asked her “Are you the one who is scared?” Then they shot her.
Pictures show she was hit in the stomach.
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The global charity Save the Children says more than 20 children are among dozens of people who have been killed since Myanmar’s military seized power Feb. 1 and detained the government's elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and much of her party leadership, alleging fraud in a November election that her party won in a landslide.
Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her campaign to bring democratic civilian rule to Myanmar, has been in detention since the coup and faces charges that her lawyer says have been cooked up to discredit her.
At least 286 people have been killed in the crackdown on protests, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group. At least four more people were killed when security forces opened fire on pro-democracy activists Thursday, according to local media reports.
The military junta has faced international condemnation for the coup and for its deadly suppression of dissent.
The United States and Britain on Thursday jointly imposed sanctions on two conglomerates controlled by Myanmar's military, with Washington calling it a response to "abhorrent violence and abuses." It followed sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the European Union on Monday against individuals involved in the coup and the repression of the demonstrators.
But, Thomas Andrews, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in the country, said in a statement Thursday that the diplomatic response was "out of step with the scale of the crisis.”
Calling for an emergency summit on the country, he said: "Conditions in Myanmar are deteriorating. But they will likely get much worse without an immediate, robust, international response in support of those under siege.”
In the meantime, Hashin Bai and his family are counting the human cost. He said his 19-year-old son was still missing, beaten up and taken by the security forces to an unknown location.
Wrapped in white burial shrouds, Khin Myo Chit was buried Wednesday.
“I’m so sad, I can’t feel it anymore,” Hashin Bai said.
