YANGON, Oct 18, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Myanmar's ruling junta said Saturday that it had recaptured a town on a trade highway to China from an ethnic armed group in the country's war-wracked north.

Following a 16-day operation, "on 16 October, Tatmadaw reoccupied Hsipaw completely," the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said, referring to the military by its Burmese name.

Northern Shan state has been rocked by fighting since June 2024 when an alliance of ethnic armed groups renewed an offensive against the military along the highway to China's Yunnan province.

The Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) captured the last remaining military base in the town of Hsipaw in October that year after weeks of fighting.

Hsipaw is normally home to around 20,000 people and sits on a highway from Myanmar's second city Mandalay to the China border, along which hundreds of millions of dollars of trade travels annually.

There were 28 clashes and "engagements" in the two weeks leading up to Hsipaw's recapture, the GNLM said, with the military "seizing 13 dead bodies of terrorists", referring to members of the anti-junta TNLA.

"The military council is committing war crimes against innocent civilians ... whether by manpower, heavy weapons, drones or airstrikes," read a statement Friday by the TNLA's Department of News and Information channel on Telegram, adding that 29 people had been killed since the junta began its latest offensive.

Myanmar's ruling junta has been fighting a myriad of ethnic armed groups and "People's Defense Forces" opposed to its rule since it seized power in a February 2021 coup, ending a brief experiment with democracy.

Since the coup, the TNLA -- one of Myanmar's most powerful ethnic armed groups -- has strengthened its control of a swathe of Shan territory, seizing around a dozen key towns and the country's main ruby-mining hub.

Fighting between the TNLA and the military caused widespread destruction in Shan state's Kyaukme township -- another key town on the trade route from Mandalay to the Chinese border -- as the junta retook control of it in early October.