The death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Myanmar has passed 1,000, as rescuers continue a desperate search for survivors and aid agencies warn of an “extremely difficult” response amid the country’s continuing conflict.
The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck central Myanmar on Friday afternoon, and was followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock. Witness reports and social media footage suggest extensive damage in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second biggest city, where buildings, religious sites and main roads were either destroyed or damaged.
Myanmar’s military junta said 1,002 people had been killed, 2,376 injured, while a further 30 others are missing. Six deaths have also been confirmed in Bangkok, the Thai capital, where a high-rise building under construction collapsed, trapping dozens of workers. A further 26 are injured and 47 still missing.
The Thai authorities are using drones fitted with thermal-imaging technology to search for survivors and believe there are indications at least 15 people are still alive.
The Junta chief in Myanmar, Min Aung Hlaing, issued a rare appeal for international aid, suggesting deep concern over the damage, and declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions.
Many humanitarian agencies have been cutting back their programmes in Myanmar, following Trump’s cuts to the US Agency for International Development.
The World Food Programme’s country director, Michael Dunford, said it could be “days and weeks” before the true scale of the damage in Myanmar, which has been gripped by conflict since a military coup in 2021, is known.
He said: “This was a highly complex, extremely difficult operating theatre before the conflict. This catastrophe – and it really is a catastrophe – is simply going to make it more so. Already a third of the population requires humanitarian assistance, that number is inevitably going to rise.”
Since seizing power in a widely opposed coup in 2021, the junta has struggled to control an armed resistance movement to its rule, which is formed of a patchwork of groups, including civilians who took up arms to fight for the return of democracy, and ethnic armed organisations that have long fought for independence. The junta has suffered humiliating defeats on the battlefield, with a BBC study estimating that it has full control over only 21% of Myanmar’s territory – though it does retain control of big cities such as Mandalay.
The junta has repeatedly been accused of blocking humanitarian aid to areas where its opponents are active. Agencies who are delivering aid must obtain travel authorisations from the military, which has in the past been repeatedly accused of blocking humanitarian aid.
It was the biggest quake to hit Myanmar in more than a century, according to US geologists, and the tremors were powerful enough to severely damage buildings across Bangkok, hundreds of miles away from the epicentre.
Bangkok city authorities said more than 100 engineers will inspect the city’s buildings, after it received more than 2,000 reports of damage.
While there was no widespread destruction, the shaking brought some dramatic images of rooftop swimming pools sloshing their contents down the side of many of the city’s towering apartment blocks. Hospitals, hotels, offices and high-rise condos were all evacuated.
One woman delivered her baby outdoors after being moved from a hospital building, while a surgeon also continued to operate on a patient after evacuating, a spokesperson told Agence-France Presse.
But the worst of the damage was in Myanmar, where four years of civil war sparked by a military coup have left healthcare services severely overstretched.
Rescue teams have been deployed from China and Russia, two of the isolated junta’s only allies. A 37-member team from the Chinese province of Yunnan reached Yangon early on Saturday with earthquake detectors, drones and other supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Russia’s emergencies ministry dispatched two planes carrying 120 rescuers and supplies, according to a report from the Russian state news agency Tass.
India also sent a search and rescue team and a medical team as well as provisions, while Malaysia’s foreign ministry said the country would send 50 people on Sunday.
The United Nations allocated $5m (£3.9m) to start relief efforts. President Donald Trump said on Friday that the US was going to help with the response.
India, France and the European Union offered to provide assistance, while the WHO said it was mobilising to prepare trauma injury supplies.
The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had spoken to Min Aung Hlaing, the Chinese embassy said, while state media reported he had “expressed deep sorrow” over the destruction and said China was “willing to provide Myanmar the needed assistance to support people in affected areas”.
The military regime has called for blood donors as public hospitals in the Sagaing and Mandalay regions have become overrun with patients.
Images on social media have shown scenes of devastation, including collapsed buildings, and volunteers scrambling to rescue those trapped beneath rubble.
“The whole of Mandalay city was affected by the earthquake,” said a witness, who asked not to be named. “The rescue teams and hospitals are now overrun. We are managing with the resources we have in the neighbourhood,” they said.
Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
