Author: AFP

The death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Myanmar and Thailand passed 700 on Saturday, as rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings in a desperate search for survivors.

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 severe damage reported in the second biggest city, Mandalay.

At least 694 people were killed and nearly 1,700 injured in Myanmar’s Mandalay region — believed to be the worst affected — the ruling junta said in a statement. 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 (miles) away from the epicentre.

Rescuers in the Thai capital laboured through the night searching for workers trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed, reduced in seconds to a pile of rubble and twisted metal by the force of the shaking.

Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt told AFP that around 10 people had been confirmed killed across the city, most in the skyscraper collapse.

But up to 100 workers were still unaccounted for at the building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market that is a magnet for tourists.

“We are doing our best with the resources we have because every life matters,” Chadchart told reporters at the scene.

“Our priority is acting as quickly as possible to save them all.”

Bangkok city authorities said they will deploy more than 100 engineers to inspect buildings for safety after receiving over 2,000 reports of damage.

Up to 400 people were forced to spend the night in the open air in city parks as their homes were not safe to return to, Chadchart said.

Significant quakes are extremely rare in Bangkok, and Friday’s tremors sent shoppers and workers rushing into the street in alarm across the city.

While there was no widespread destruction, the shaking brought some dramatic images of rooftop swimming pools sloshing their contents down the side of many of the city’s towering apartment blocks and hotels.

Even hospitals were evacuated, with one woman delivering her baby outdoors after being moved from a hospital building. A surgeon also continued to operate on a patient after evacuating, completing the operation outside, a spokesman told AFP.

Rare junta plea for help

But the worst of the damage was in Myanmar, where four years of civil war sparked by a military coup have ravaged the healthcare and emergency response systems.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid, indicating the severity of the calamity. Previous military regimes have shunned foreign assistance even after major natural disasters.

The country declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions after the quake, and at one major hospital in the capital, Naypyidaw, medics were forced to treat the wounded in the open air.

One official described it as a “mass casualty area”.

“I haven’t seen (something) like this before. We are trying to handle the situation. I’m so exhausted now,” a doctor told AFP.

Mandalay, a city of more than 1.7 million people, appeared to have been badly hit. AFP photos showed dozens of buildings reduced to rubble.

A resident reached by phone told AFP that a hospital and a hotel had been destroyed, and said the city was badly lacking in rescue personnel.

A huge queue of buses and lorries lined up at a checkpoint to enter the capital early on Saturday.

Offers of foreign assistance began coming in, with President Donald Trump on Friday pledging US help.

“It’s terrible,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office about the quake when asked if he would respond to the appeal by Myanmar’s military rulers.

“It’s a real bad one, and we will be helping. We’ve already spoken with the country.”

India, France and the European Union offered to provide assistance, while the WHO said it was mobilising to prepare trauma injury supplies.

A powerful earthquake hit Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand on Friday, turning a major hospital in the Myanmar capital into a “mass casualty area” and trapping dozens of workers in an under-construction skyscraper in Bangkok.

The 7.7-magnitude tremor hit northwest of the city of Sagaing on Friday afternoon at a shallow depth, the United States Geological Survey said. A 6.4-magnitude aftershock hit the same area minutes later.

The quakes wrought widespread damage, particularly in Myanmar, where buildings fell onto their sides, roads cracked open, and the well-known Ava bridge collapsed near the epicentre.

In the capital Naypyidaw, AFP journalists saw the entrance of the emergency department at the city’s main hospital pancaked onto a car.

Wounded at the 1,000-bed facility were being treated outside, intravenous drips hanging from their gurneys. Some writhed in pain, others lay still as relatives sought to comfort them.

A hospital official ushered journalists away, saying: “this is a mass casualty area.”

Another official said hundreds of injured people had arrived at the facility.

“I haven’t seen (something) like this before. We are trying to handle the situation. I’m so exhausted now,” a doctor told AFP.

The route to the hospital was jammed with vehicles. An ambulance tried to make its way through, a paramedic shouting “cars, move aside so the ambulance can get through.”

At the city’s National Museum, pieces fell from the ceiling as the building began shaking. Uniformed staff ran outside, some trembling and tearful, others grabbing cellphones to try to contact loved ones.

Skyscraper collapse

Across the border in Thailand, where strong quakes are rare, the powerful tremors sent residents across many cities flooding out into the streets in panic.

In Bangkok, a 30-storey building under construction collapsed, trapping 43 workers, police and medics said.

The massive building intended for government offices was reduced to a tangle of rubble and twisted metal in seconds, footage shared on social media showed.

An AFP photographer at the site saw ambulances and rescue teams at the site, near the city’s sprawling Chatuchak market, a popular destination for tourists and locals alike.

“When I arrived to inspect the site, I heard people calling for help, saying help me,” Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP.

“We estimate that hundreds of people are injured but we are still determining the number of casualties,” he said.

Across Bangkok and the northern tourist destination of Chiang Mai, where the power briefly went out, stunned locals rushed outside, unsure of how to respond to the unusual quake.

Sai, 76 was working at a minimart in the northern city when the shop started the shake.

“I quickly rushed out of the shop along with other customers,” he said.

“This is the strongest tremor I’ve experienced in my life.”

Buildings damaged

The quake prompted Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok, where some metro and light rail services were suspended, further snarling the city’s already notorious traffic.

Airports were operating as normal.

Earlier, the prime minister said she had interrupted an official visit to the southern island of Phuket to hold an “urgent meeting” after the quake, according to a post on X.

The quake was felt across the region, with China, Cambodia, Bangladesh and India all reporting tremors.

A livestream broadcast by the state-linked Beijing News showed around a dozen emergency workers in orange jumpsuits and helmets standing behind a cordon on a street strewn with fallen masonry in the city of Ruili, on the Chinese border with Myanmar.

A female shop worker interviewed on the livestream showed phone footage of people running out of stores with their hands over their heads as tremors swept through the street, only to rush back inside when what was described as a nearby burst pipe drenched them with water from above.

A video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and geolocated by AFP showed a torrent of water and debris cascading from the roof of a high-rise block in Ruili as people fled through a street market below.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country was ready to offer “all possible assistance” to Myanmar and Thailand and had placed authorities on standby for requests.

Earthquakes are relatively common in Myanmar, where six strong quakes of 7.0 magnitude or more struck between 1930 and 1956 near the Sagaing Fault, which runs north to south through the centre of the country, according to the USGS.

A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake in the ancient capital Bagan in central Myanmar killed three people in 2016, also toppling spires and crumbling temple walls at the tourist destination.