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By Reuters Foreign rescue teams and supplies arrived in Myanmar on Sunday to help the impoverished country cope with an earthquake that killed over 1,600 and left many near the epicentre scrambling for help without proper equipment. The 7.7-magnitude quake, on
By Reuters
Foreign rescue teams and supplies arrived in Myanmar on Sunday to help the impoverished country cope with an earthquake that killed over 1,600 and left many near the epicentre scrambling for help without proper equipment.
The 7.7-magnitude quake, one of Myanmar's strongest in a century, jolted the Southeast Asian nation on Friday, leaving 1,644 people dead, 3,408 injured and 139 missing, the military government said.
India, China and Thailand are among Myanmar's neighbours that have sent relief materials and teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.
Critical infrastructure – including bridges, highways, airports and railways – across the country of 55 million lay damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts while a civil war that has battered the economy, displaced over 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system rages on.
In some of the hardest-hit areas, residents told Reuters that government assistance was scarce, leaving people to fend for themselves.
"It is necessary to restore the transportation routes as soon as possible," the junta chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, told officials on Saturday, according to state media.
"It is necessary to fix the railways and also reopen the airports so that rescue operations would be more effective."
The U.S. Geological Service's predictive modelling estimated Myanmar's death toll could top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country's annual economic output.
Hospitals in parts of central and northwestern Myanmar, including the second-biggest city, Mandalay, and the capital Naypyitaw, were struggling to cope with an influx of injured people, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said late on Saturday.
The quake also shook parts of neighbouring Thailand, bringing down an under-construction skyscraper and killing 17 people across the capital, according to Thai authorities.
At least 78 people remained trapped under the debris of the collapsed building, where rescue operations continued for a third day, using drones and sniffer dogs to hunt for survivors.