At least 144 people have died and 732 have been injured after a powerful earthquake struck Myanmar, killing at least nine more in neighbouring Thailand where a high-rise building under construction in Bangkok collapsed.
The 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit central Myanmar at 12.50pm local time on Friday at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles). Its epicentre was about 11 miles (17.2km) from Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city.
Min Aung Hlaing, the chief of Myanmar’s junta, said he expected the death toll to rise and urged “any country, any organisation” to help with relief efforts – a rare request from the isolated military government. The junta said blood was in high demand in the worst-affected areas as concerns grew about how rescuers would even reach some parts of a country already enduring a widespread humanitarian crisis.
Thai authorities said eight of the nine reported deaths happened after the high-rise building crashed to the ground in the capital. Rescuers are searching for another 81 people trapped in the rubble. Damage was also reported in China.
In Myanmar, witnesses and local media said people had been killed in the city of Mandalay and in the towns Toungoo and Aungban. Hundreds of casualties were taken to a hospital in the capital, Naypyidaw, where injured people were being treated outside because of damage to the building.
A rescue worker from Amarapura, an ancient city and now a township of Mandalay, said the bodies of 30 people had been recovered from collapsed multistorey apartment blocks.
“I have never experienced anything like this before – our town looks like a collapsed city,” he said, estimating that about a fifth of the buildings had been destroyed.
“We received calls for help from people from the inside, but we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working.”
The scale of the damage in Myanmar is yet to become clear, though social media footage emerging from central regions has shown many buildings collapsed or damaged.
In Bangkok, authorities declared the city a disaster area, saying they needed to assess and monitor damaged areas and help people who may still be at risk. People ran out on to the streets in panic, many of them hotel guests in bathrobes and swimming costumes, as water cascaded down from an elevated pool at one luxury hotel. In the northern tourist destination of Chiang Mai, where the power briefly went out, stunned residents also hurried outside, unsure how to respond.
“I quickly rushed out of the shop along with other customers,” said Sai, 76, who was working at a minimart in Chiang Mai when the shop started to shake. “This is the strongest tremor I’ve experienced in my life,” Sai told Agence France-Presse.
Mohamed Riyas, the regional director of the International Rescue Committee, said the earthquake’s impact was likely to be severe and could displace thousands of people, leaving them in need of food, shelter and medical aid.
“We fear it may be weeks before we understand the full extent of destruction caused by this earthquake, as communication network lines are down and transport is disrupted,” he added. “The damage to infrastructure and homes, loss of life, and injuries sustained by communities affected should not be underestimated.”
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, offered his condolences and said regional networks were mobilising to help those in need.
Myanmar’s junta, which has lost swathes of territory to armed groups, declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions. As well as the call for international aid, state TV made a domestic appeal for medical supplies and blood donations because of what it said were “so many” injuries in three urban centres.
The quake will further stretch Myanmar’s ruling military. The anti-junta militias, known as the people’s defence forces, said their troops would provide humanitarian help.
Footage reportedly taken inside Mandalay airport showed people racing to safety through dusty hallways, the floor scattered with ceiling panels. The videos, published by local media, show panicked people crouching on the floor outside the airport for safety.
A witness in Mandalay, who asked not to be named, said eight people had been killed and others were feared to be trapped after a construction building in Pyigyitagon township collapsed. “The whole of Mandalay city was affected by the earthquake. The rescue teams and hospitals are now overrun. We are managing with the resources we have in the neighbourhood,” they said.
Images published by Khit Thit Media, a news agency based in Myanmar, showed piles of bricks and rubble outside a damaged mosque, also in Mandalay. At least 20 people had died there, it reported, though it was not possible to verify this figure.
At least three people were also killed after a mosque in Toungoo, in Bago region, partly collapsed, two witnesses told Reuters. “We were saying prayers when the shaking started … Three died on the spot,” said a witness. Local media reported that at least two people died and 20 were injured after a hotel collapsed in Aungban.
A spokesperson for the World Health Organization described the earthquake as “a huge event” that posed “a very, very big threat to life and health”, adding: “We’ve activated our logistics hub to look particularly for trauma supplies and things like external fixators, because we expect that there will be many, many injuries that need to be dealt with.”
A programme coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, Marie Manrique, in a briefing from Yangon, said: “Public infrastructure has been damaged including roads, bridges and public buildings. We currently have concerns for large-scale dams that people are watching to see the conditions of them. We anticipate the impact to be quite large.”
Myanmar has been gripped by conflict since the military seized power in February 2021 in a coup widely opposed by the public. It has since launched brutal crackdowns on any forms of opposition, and it is dangerous for journalists to operate inside the country.
A senior UN official warned in November that 2 million people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state could face starvation within months because fierce conflict and trade blockades had led to a “total economic collapse” and the imminent risk of famine.
