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Residents scrambled desperately through collapsed buildings on Sunday searching for survivors as aftershocks rattled the devastated city of Mandalay, two days after a massive earthquake killed more than 1,600 people in Myanmar and at least 17 in neighbouring Thailand.
The initial 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.
The tremors collapsed buildings, downed bridges and buckled roads, with mass destruction seen in the city of more than 1.7 million people, the country’s second largest.
One rescue worker said most operations in the city were being conducted by small, self-organised resident groups that lack the required equipment.
“We have been approaching collapsed buildings, but some structures remain unstable while we work,” he said, asking not to be named because of security concerns.
Scores of people were feared trapped under collapsed buildings across Mandalay but most could not be reached or pulled out without heavy machinery, another humanitarian worker and two residents said.
“People are still stuck in the buildings, they can’t take people out,” said a resident who asked not to be named.
Elsewhere in the city tea shop owner Win Lwin picked his way through the remains of a collapsed restaurant on a main road in his neighbourhood, tossing bricks aside one by one.
“About seven people died here” when the quake struck on Friday, he told AFP. “I’m looking for more bodies but I know there cannot be any survivors.
“We don’t know how many bodies there could be but we are looking.”
On Sunday morning, a small aftershock struck, sending people scurrying out of a hotel for safety, after a similar tremor felt late Saturday evening.
Truckloads of firefighters gathered at one of Mandalay’s main fire stations to be dispatched to sites around the city.
The night before, rescuers had pulled a woman out alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building, with applause ringing out as she was carried by stretcher to an ambulance.
Myanmar’s ruling junta said in a statement on Saturday that at least 1,644 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured in the country, with at least 139 more missing.
But with unreliable communications, the true scale of the disaster remains unclear in the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.
The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated Myanmar’s death toll could top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid on Friday, indicating the severity of the calamity. On Sunday he called on “all military and civilian hospitals, as well as healthcare workers” to “work together in a coordinated and efficient manner”, according to state-run media.
Previous military governments have shunned foreign assistance, even after major natural disasters.
Myanmar has already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.
Anti-junta fighters in the country have declared a two-week partial ceasefire in quake-affected regions starting on Sunday, the shadow National Unity Government said in a statement. The military reportedly continued airstrikes after the quake, including just hours afterwards.
The government in exile said it would “collaborate with the UN and NGOs to ensure security, transportation, and the establishment of temporary rescue and medical camps” in areas that it controls, according to the statement, which was released on social media.
Aid agencies have warned that Myanmar is unprepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said a severe lack of medical supplies as well as damage to infrastructure such as roads was hampering efforts to respond to earthquake. The agency said hospitals and health facilities had also sustained extensive damage or had been destroyed.
In some of the country’s hardest hit areas, residents told Reuters that government assistance was scarce so far, leaving people to fend for themselves. The entire town of Sagaing near the quake’s epicentre was devastated, said resident Han Zin.
“What we are seeing here is widespread destruction - many buildings have collapsed into the ground,” he said by phone, adding that much of the town had been without electricity since the disaster hit and drinking water was running out.
“We have received no aid, and there are no rescue workers in sight.”
About 3.5 million people were displaced by the raging civil war, many at risk of hunger, even before the quake struck.
But some aid and rescue personnel were beginning to arrive. Indian military aircraft made multiple sorties into Myanmar on Saturday, including ferrying supplies and search-and-rescue crews to Naypyitaw, the purpose-made capital, parts of which have been wrecked by the earthquake.
The Indian army will help set up a field hospital in Mandalay, and two navy ships carrying supplies are heading to Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon, said Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
Multiple teams of Chinese rescue personnel have arrived, including one that crossed in overland from its southwestern province of Yunnan, China’s embassy in Myanmar said on social media.
A 78-member team from Singapore, accompanied by rescue dogs, was operating in Mandalay on Sunday, Myanmar state-media said.
Across the border in Thailand, rescuers in Bangkok worked Sunday to pluck out survivors trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed after the Friday earthquake.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority said 32 people were injured and 83 still unaccounted for – most from the site of a 30-storey tower block under construction that collapsed when the magnitude 7.7 quake struck on Friday.
Dozens more were still trapped under the immense pile of debris where the skyscraper once stood.
Workers at the site used large mechanical diggers in an attempt to find victims still trapped on Sunday morning.
Sniffer dogs and thermal imaging drones have also been deployed to seek signs of life in the collapsed building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market popular among tourists.
Authorities said they would be deploying engineers to assess and repair 165 damaged buildings in the city on Sunday.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
