Myanmar’s military rulers let in hundreds of foreign rescue personnel on Saturday after an earthquake killed more than 1,600 people, the deadliest natural disaster to hit the impoverished, war-torn country in years.
The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck northwest of the city of Sagaing in central Myanmar in the early afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.
The quake destroyed buildings, downed bridges, and buckled roads across swathes of Myanmar, with massive destruction seen in Mandalay, the country’s second biggest city and home to more than 1.7 million people.
The death toll from the quake has risen to 1,644, the ruling junta said in a statement from their information team, with 3,408 people injured. The statement added that at least 139 people are still missing after Friday’s quake.
Around 10 more deaths have been confirmed in Bangkok.
But with communications badly disrupted, the true scale of the disaster has yet to emerge from the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.
It was the biggest quake to hit Myanmar in over a century, according to US geologists, and the tremors were powerful enough to severely damage buildings across Bangkok, hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre.
In Bangkok, rescue operations continued at the site of the 33-story tower’s collapse, where 47 people were missing or trapped under the rubble, including workers from Myanmar.
The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated Myanmar’s death toll could exceed 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.
In Mandalay, AFP journalists saw a centuries-old Buddhist pagoda that had been reduced to rubble by the quake.
“It started shaking, then it started getting serious,” said a soldier at a checkpoint on the road outside the pagoda.
“The monastery also collapsed. One monk died. Some people were injured, we pulled out some people and took them to the hospital.”
The head of the main Buddha statue in the monastery fell off and was placed on the platform at its feet.
