The 7.7 magnitude quake hit Friday, with the epicentre near Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay. It damaged the city’s airport, buckled roads and collapsed hundreds of buildings along a wide swath down the country’s centre.
Myanmar has been torn apart after the 7.7 earthquake jolted the country and other regions, including Thailand and Bangkok. Myanmar’s state media on Monday said that the death toll from last week’s massive quake has passed 2,000. Two hundred Buddhist monks were crushed by a collapsing monastery. Homes, high-rises, and industrial structures came down like a pack of cards as the tragedy befell Myanmar.
Fifty children were killed when a preschool classroom crumbled. Seven hundred Muslims were struck while praying at mosques for Ramadan. The quake could exacerbate hunger and disease outbreaks in a country that was already one of the world’s most challenging places for humanitarian organisations to operate because of civil war, aid groups and the United Nations warned.
The 7.7 magnitude quake hit Friday, with the epicentre near Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay. It damaged the city’s airport, buckled roads and collapsed hundreds of buildings along a wide swath down the country’s centre.
Rescue and relief efforts continue
Relief efforts are further hampered by power outages, fuel shortages and spotty communications. A lack of heavy machinery has slowed search-and-rescue operations, forcing many to search for survivors by hand in daily temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Rescue workers at Mandalay’s collapsed U Hla Thein monastery said they were still searching for about 150 of the dead monks. Some 700 Muslim worshipers attending Friday prayers were killed when mosques collapsed, said Tun Kyi, a member of the steering committee of the Spring Revolution Myanmar Muslim Network. He said some 60 mosques were damaged or destroyed. Videos posted on The Irrawaddy online news site showed several mosques toppling.
It was not clear whether those numbers were already included in the official toll. The United Nations’ Myanmar country team called for unimpeded access for aid teams. “Even before this earthquake, nearly 20 million people in Myanmar were in need of humanitarian assistance,” said Marcoluigi Corsi, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator.
Devastation’s full extent still not clear
The World Health Organisation said it has reports of three hospitals destroyed and 22 partially damaged in the region. “There is an urgent need for trauma and surgical care, blood transfusion supplies, anesthetics, essential medicines and mental health support,” it said.
More than 10,000 buildings are collapsed or severely damaged in central and northwest Myanmar, the UN humanitarian agency said. One preschool classroom building collapsed in Mandalay district, killing 50 children and two teachers, it said.
An artificial intelligence analysis of satellite images of Mandalay by Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab showed 515 buildings with 80% to 100% damage and another 1,524 with 20 per cent to 80 per cent damage. It was not clear what percentage of the city’s buildings that represented.
(With inputs from the Associated Press)
