The rescuers saved a 63 -year -old woman from the rubble of a building in the capital of Myanmar on Tuesday, but hope was to find many more survivors of the violent earthquake that killed more than 2,700 people, aggravating a humanitarian crisis caused by a civil war.
The Naytyitaw fire service said that the woman had successfully removed from the rubble 91 hours after being buried when the building collapsed in the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that hit at noon on Friday. Experts say that the probability of finding survivors decreases considerably after 72 hours.
The figures for the number of deaths plan to increase
Myanmar’s Military Government Head of Military General Aung Hlaing, a forum for emergency donations in Naytyitaw told 2,719 people had now been found dead, with 4,521 others injured and 441 missing, said MRTV television from the Myanmar State.
He said on Friday’s earthquake was the second more powerful in the country’s recorded history after a magnitude earthquake east of Mandalay in May 1912.
Victims’ figures should increase. The earthquake has struck a wide strip of the country, leaving many electricity -free areas, telephone or cellular connections and roads and harmful bridges, which makes the full expanse of devastation difficult to assess.
Until now, most reports came from Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar, which was near the epicenter of the earthquake, and Naytyitaw, the capital.
“The needs are massive and they are increasing on time,” said Julia Rees, UNICEF assistant representative for Myanmar.
The Myanmar fire service said 403 people had been saved in Mandalay and that 259 bodies have been found so far. In an incident, 50 Buddhist monks who passed a religious examination in a monastery were killed when the building collapsed, and 150 others would be buried in the rubble.
Structural damage is extended
The World Health Organization said that more than 10,000 buildings are known for collapse or seriously damaged by the earthquake.
The earthquake has also shaken neighboring Thailand, causing a collapse of a high -rise building under construction and buried many workers.
Two bodies were removed from the rubble on Monday and another was recovered on Tuesday, but dozens were still missing. Overall, 21 people were killed and 34 injured in Bangkok, mainly on the construction site.
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In Myanmar, research and rescue efforts in the affected area stopped briefly at noon on Tuesday while people were standing for a minute in a silent tribute to the dead.
Rescue efforts are moving at a slow pace
Foreign assistance employees have arrived slowly to help in rescue efforts, but progress has been late due to a lack of heavy machines in many places.
On a site in Naytyitaw on Tuesday, workers formed a human chain, passing pieces of brick and hand by hand by hand from the ruins of a collapsed building.
The newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Tuesday that a team of Chinese rescuers had saved four people the day before the ruins of an apartment complex. They understood a 5 -year -old woman and a pregnant woman who had been trapped for more than 60 hours.
He also reported that two teenagers had been able to get out of the rubble from the same building using their pocket lamps from their mobile phone to guide them. The rescuers were then able to use the details of what they told them to locate their grandmother and their brother.
The international rescue teams of several countries are on the scene, including Russia, China, India, the United Arab Emirates and several Southeast Asian countries.
A small American team from the Agency for International Development of Disasters arrived on Tuesday to determine the best way to respond given the limited American resources due to the reduction of the agency’s foreign aid budget and dismantling as an independent operation.
An American official said that the team of three had waited for visas before making the trip to neighboring Thailand after a weekend decision to provide $ 2 million in MYANMAR. The manager spoke under the cover of anonymity because the arrival of the team has not yet been announced publicly.
Aid commitments flock while managers warn against the risk of illness
In the meantime, several countries have promised millions of help to help myanmar and humanitarian aid organizations with the monumental task to come.
Even before the earthquake, more than 3 million people had been moved from their houses by the brutal civil war of Myanmar, and almost 20 million needed it, according to the UN
Many were already lacking in basic medical care and standard vaccinations, as well as the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure by the earthquake and the movement of people in overcrowded shelters increase the risk of flambés of diseases, warned the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.
“Vulnerability to respiratory infections, skin diseases, diseases transmitted by vectors such as dengue and vaccine preventable diseases like measles increases,” OCHA said in his latest report.
The start of the monsoon season also concern
The shelter is also a major problem, especially with the molly season that is looming.
Since the earthquake, many people slept outside, either because the houses were destroyed or for fear of aftershocks.
The civil war complicates help in the event of a disaster
The Myanmar army seized the power in 2021 of the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, provoking what turned into a significant armed resistance and a brutal civil war.
Government forces have lost control of a large part of the Myanmar, and many places were dangerous or impossible for the aid groups to reach it even before the earthquake.
Military attacks and those of certain anti-military groups did not stop in the aftermath of the earthquake, although the national government of national shadow unity called a unilateral ceasefire for its forces.
The NUG, established by elected legislators who were ousted in 2021, called for the international community to ensure that humanitarian aid is issued directly to the victims of the earthquake, urging “the vigilance against any attempted military junta to divert or hinder humanitarian aid”, saying that this could have “devastating the consequences”.
The ceasefire plan for the armed wing of the Nug, called the popular defense forces, would have little effect on the battlefield, but could attract a more international conviction of the operations continuous by the military, including air attacks reported by independent media.
A second armed opposition group, a coalition of three powerful armies of ethnic minority guerrillas called The Three Brotherhood Alliance, announced on Tuesday that it would also implement a unilateral cease-fire of a month.
However, Min Aung Hlaing seemed to reject the implementation of a cease-fire, affirming in his speech on Tuesday that the military will continue to take the necessary defensive measures against certain ethnic armed groups which do not currently carry out combat operations, but which carried out military training, which, according to him, was equivalent to a hostile action.
It was not immediately clear if the soldiers led to humanitarian aid. In the past, he initially refused to authorize foreign rescue teams or numerous emergency supplies after the Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which left more than 100,000 deaths. Even once she allowed foreign assistance, it was with serious restrictions.
In this case, however, Min Aung Hlaing said on the day of the earthquake that the country would accept external aid.
Tom Andrews, an instructor on the rights to the Myanmar commanded by the Human Rights Council supported by the UN, said on X that to facilitate aid, military attacks must stop.
“The objective in Myanmar must be to save lives, not to take them,” he said.
– Press journalists associated with Grant Peck and Jintamas Saksorchai in Bangkok, Matthew Lee in Washington and Jamey Kealen in Geneva contributed to this story.
