Myanmar’s junta chief yesterday made a rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have already endured three years of war.
Floods and landslides have killed about 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.
In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said on Friday, piling further misery on the country where war has raged since the military seized power in 2021.
Photo: AFP
In Taungoo — about an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw — residents paddled makeshift rafts on floodwaters that reached the roofs of some buildings.
About 300 people were sheltering at a monastery on high ground in a nearby village.
“We are surrounded by water and we don’t have enough food for everyone,” one man said. “We need food, water and medicine as priority.”
Outside another temple, Buddhist nuns in pink and orange robes waded through knee-deep water.
“I lost my rice, chickens and ducks,” said farmer Naing Tun, who had brought his three cows to higher ground near Taungoo after floodwaters inundated his village.
“I don’t care about the other belongings. Nothing else is more important than the lives of people and animals,” he said.
The rains in the wake of typhoon Yagi sent people across Southeast Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and Jet Ski in Thailand.
“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper quoted junta chief Min Aung Hlaing as saying.
“It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible,” he was quoted as saying.
Myanmar’s military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.
Last year, it suspended travel authorizations for aid groups trying to reach about a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.
At the time the UN slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”
The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country’s fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.
A military spokesperson said it had lost contact with some areas of the country and was investigating reports that dozens had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in central Mandalay region.
Local media reported that six people had been killed in a landslide on Friday in Tachileik.
Separately, Vietnamese authorities yesterday said that 262 people were dead and 83 were missing in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi.
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