The offensive began on 26 September 2024 with attacks on military bases surrounding Ann. The first major prize fell on 7 October: the Mae Taung tactical operation command, a fortified installation that served as the outer defensive bulwark for the Western Command headquarters. Its capture came despite heavy air and artillery bombardment by junta forces, who deployed jet fighters and Y-12 and Y-8 transport aircraft to slow the advance. With Mae Taung gone, Ann's defenses began to unravel. More bases fell on 11 October. The following day, the junta cut internet and phone services across most of Rakhine State, plunging the civilian population into an information blackout even as fighting intensified around them.

As the Arakan Army closed in, Ann emptied. Government employees fled first. By late October, two-thirds of the town's population had left, according to Narinjara News, and those who remained faced acute food shortages. The general hospital shut down after artillery struck the Western Command's military hospital on 20 October, forcing doctors and patients to evacuate to a local school. The Irrawaddy reported that by 28 October only 3,000 residents remained, trapped between advancing fighters and a junta that restricted civilian movement. Reports emerged that the regime had forcibly conscripted 600 Rohingya men to help defend Ann and nearby Taungup -- people already among Myanmar's most persecuted, now pressed into service for the army that had driven hundreds of thousands of their community from the country.

By late October, the Arakan Army had surrounded Ann completely and occupied the airport, severing the junta's last air supply line. On 10 November, fighters shot down a Mi-17 helicopter attempting to resupply the besieged garrison. The Western Command fractured from within. Sources reported that troops were divided: some wanted to surrender, others insisted on fighting to the end. Around 300 soldiers, including officers of major rank, laid down their arms. Others attempted to escape along the Ann-Padan Road toward Magway Region, only to be ambushed by the Student Armed Force, People's Defense Force units, and the Asho Chin Defence Force -- resistance groups from across Myanmar's fractured opposition who had converged on Ann to support the Arakan Army's offensive.

On 20 December 2024, the Arakan Army announced it had seized the Western Command headquarters, completing the capture of Ann. The battle's significance went far beyond a single town. The Western Command was one of the Myanmar military's regional power centers, and its fall marked the culmination of an offensive that had stripped the junta of effective control over most of Rakhine State in roughly a year. The Arakan Army, part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance that had launched Operation 1027 the previous November, had fought its way from the northern border towns southward through central Rakhine in a campaign that combined conventional military operations with an ability to coordinate with diverse resistance groups. Ann was not a beginning but an endpoint -- the moment when the map of Myanmar's civil war shifted decisively in the west.