The huge 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Friday caused widespread destruction across the country – with fears that the death toll could in reality end up being more than 10,000
The death toll in disaster-hit Myanmar is set to soar past 3,000 after an earthquake devastated the country, officials say.
Chief of the ruling junta Min Aung Hlaing yesterday said there were 2,719 confirmed fatalities from Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake. But with 4,521 people injured and 441 missing, the US Geological Survey warned “a death toll over 10,000 is a strong possibility” based on the location and size of the quake. Reports claimed that so many corpses had piled up in the second city of Mandalay – near the epicentre of the disaster – that they were being “cremated in stacks”.
Food and water supplies are said to be dwindling, sparking fears of a wider humanitarian disaster. The country was already in the grip of a bloody civil war – ever since the military took power in a coup in 2021 – which already saw more than 3.5 million people displaced.
Myanmar yesterday held a minute’s silence in tribute to the victims, just one moment of remembrance in a week of national mourning declared by the military junta. Flags will fly at half-mast on official buildings until April 6 “in sympathy for the loss of life and damages”, officials said.
But five days on from the quake, rescue workers are still finding people who have miraculously survived. Emergency services yesterday saved a 63-year-old woman from the rubble of a building in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw – 91 hours after she was buried under the remnants of her building.
Her rescue came more than 24 hours after workers pulled a pregnant woman out of the rubble three days on from the disaster. Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have urged the junta to allow aid workers immediate access to these areas.
“Myanmar’s military junta still invokes fear, even in the wake of a horrific natural disaster that killed and injured thousands,” said Bryony Lau, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director. “The junta needs to break from its appalling past practice and ensure that humanitarian aid quickly reaches those whose lives are at risk in earthquake-affected areas,” she added.
The junta has also drawn criticism for continuing to open fire on villages even as the country reels from the disaster. Meanwhile in neighbouring Thailand, where the quake sent a 30-storey tower block crumbling to the ground, rescuers were continuing to comb for survivors in the rubble.
Workers yesterday said US scanners had detected 70 signs that could be missing people deep inside the rubble of the collapsed State Audit Office building in Bangkok. They were located in the centre of the collapsed building, between the 17th and 21st floors where most of the missing people had been working, the Ruamkatanyu Rescue Foundation said.
Bangkok deputy governor Tavida Kamolvej said it was unclear whether all 70 signs represented missing people. However, six had been identified as human bodies. The building had pancaked, with the collapsed floors lying on top of each other, so it was not known which floor each person was on, she said.
Rescuers said they were making the best progress they could, but admitted it was a struggle to get to the trapped people. The 30-storey building had been under construction, so there was no complete blueprint, rescuers said. The walls were about one metre thick, making excavation difficult.
Rescue workers hope to insert search cameras into the cavities to determine whether there are human bodies. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) said that the confirmed toll from the collapse was 13 dead and 19 injured, with as many as 80 still missing. Seven other deaths linked to Friday’s quake were reported across Bangkok at other locations.
