bangkok: The death toll in last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar has passed 2,000, state media said on Monday, as accounts of some people’s last moments emerged: Two hundred Buddhist monks crushed by a collapsing monastery.
Fifty children killed when a preschool classroom crumbled. Seven hundred Muslims struck while praying at mosques for Ramadan.
The quake could exacerbate hunger and disease outbreaks in a country that was already one of the world’s most challenging places for humanitarian organisations to operate because of civil war, aid groups and the United Nations warned. The 7.7 magnitude quake hit Friday, with the epicentre near Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay. It damaged the city’s airport, buckled roads and collapsed hundreds of buildings along a wide swathe down the country’s centre.
Relief efforts are further hampered by power outages, fuel shortages and spotty communications. A lack of heavy machinery has slowed search-and-rescue operations, forcing many to search for survivors by hand in daily temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Rescue workers at Mandalay’s collapsed U Hla Thein monastery said they were still searching for about 150 of the dead monks.
Some 700 Muslim worshipers attending Friday prayers were killed when mosques collapsed, said Tun Kyi, a member of the steering committee of the Spring Revolution Myanmar Muslim Network. He said some 60 mosques were damaged or destroyed. Videos posted on The Irrawaddy online news site showed several mosques toppling.
The true number of people killed and injured across the regions hit is thought to be possibly many times the official figures, but with telecommunication outages and extreme challenges to movement around the country, little is known about the damage in many areas.
“We’re really not clear on the scale of the destruction at this stage,” Lauren Ellery, deputy director of programs in Myanmar for the International Rescue Committee, said.
There is a state of emergency in six regions, and Ellery said her teams on the ground and their local partners are currently assessing where needs are the greatest, while providing emergency medical care, humanitarian supplies and other assistance.
“They were talking about a town near Mandalay where 80% of the buildings were reportedly collapsed, but it wasn’t in the news because telecommunications have been slow,” she said.
The WHO said it has reports of three hospitals destroyed and 22 partially damaged in the region. “There is an urgent need for trauma and surgical care, supplies,” it said.