Myanmar’s neighbors sent warships and planes to help with the rescue effort on Sunday, as international aid gathers pace after a devastating earthquake devastated much of the impoverished Southeast Asian country, Al Jazeera Balkans reports.
At least 1,644 people were killed and 3,400 injured in Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest to hit Myanmar in a century, the military government said, according to Reuters.
“All military and civilian hospitals, as well as health workers, must work together in a coordinated and effective manner to ensure an effective medical response,” junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing said, according to state media.
Model projections by the U.S. Geological Survey estimate the death toll in Myanmar could exceed 10,000, with losses exceeding the country’s annual economic output.
An earthquake has rocked parts of neighboring Thailand, killing 17 people in the capital, where a skyscraper collapsed, according to Thai authorities. At least 78 people are trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building.
The most devastating earthquake to hit Myanmar in 80 years has damaged key infrastructure, including an airport, highways and bridges, hampering aid operations, the United Nations said.
The quake hit a country already in chaos due to a civil war that escalated after a 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The strike sparked an armed uprising.
The armed conflict has devastated the largely agrarian economy of Myanmar, formerly Burma. The conflict has displaced more than 3.5 million people and crippled basic services such as health care.
The opposition’s shadow democratic government announced a two-week unilateral ceasefire with the ruling military junta on Sunday, although “defensive operations” were excluded.
The military junta resumed attacks on rebel groups shortly after the earthquake struck on Friday, according to media reports. In an interview with the BBC, the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, called on the junta to halt all military operations.
In some of the worst-hit areas of the country, residents told Reuters that government assistance was so weak that people were left to fend for themselves.
The entire town of Sagaing, near the epicenter of the quake, was devastated, said resident Han Zin.
“What we see here is widespread destruction – many buildings have completely collapsed,” he said by telephone, adding that much of the city has been without electricity since the disaster struck and that drinking water has run out.
“We have not received any aid and there are no rescuers in sight,” he said.
Across the Irrawaddy River in Mandalay, a rescue worker said most of the operations in the country’s second-largest city were being carried out by small, self-organised groups of residents who lack the necessary equipment.
“We have approached the collapsed buildings, but some buildings are still unstable as we work,” he said, asking to remain anonymous for security reasons.
Dozens of people are feared trapped under collapsed buildings across Mandalay, but most of the victims cannot be reached or pulled out without heavy machinery, an aid worker and two residents said.
Hospitals in parts of central and northwestern Myanmar, including Mandalay and Sagaing, are overwhelmed with the injured, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
India, China and Thailand are among neighboring countries that have sent supplies and relief teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.
Indian military aircraft landed in Myanmar on Saturday, including a ferry carrying supplies and search and rescue teams to Naypyitaw, the purpose-built capital, parts of which were destroyed in the earthquake.
The Indian army will help set up a field hospital in Mandalay, and two naval ships carrying supplies are heading to Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said.
Several teams of Chinese rescue personnel have arrived, including one that crossed overland from the southwestern province of Yunnan, the Chinese embassy in Myanmar said on social media.
A 78-member team from Singapore, accompanied by search and rescue dogs, was leading the rescue effort in Mandalay on Sunday, Myanmar state media reported.
