The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation.
The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed.
More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses.
Photo: AFP
A UN estimate suggested that more than 3 million people might have been affected by the magnitude 7.7 quake, compounding challenges caused by four years of civil war.
The UN’s top aid official yesterday met with victims in the central Burmese city of Mandalay — situated close to the epicenter and now grappling with severe damage across the city.
“The destruction is staggering,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher wrote on X.
“The world must rally behind the people of Myanmar,” he added.
The new toll was announced after Burmese State Administration Council Chairman Min Aung Hlaing returned from a rare foreign trip to a regional summit in Bangkok on Friday, where he met with leaders including the prime ministers of Thailand and India.
The general’s attendance at the summit courted controversy, with protesters at the venue displaying a banner calling him a “murderer” and anti-junta groups condemning his inclusion.
Min Aung Hlaing reaffirmed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the junta’s plans to hold “free and fair” elections in December, Burmese state media said.
Modi called for a post-quake ceasefire in Myanmar’s civil war to be made permanent, and said the elections needed to be “inclusive and credible,” an Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said.
Critics have derided the planned election as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies.
Since overthrowing the elected civilian government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the military has struggled to run Myanmar, leaving the economy and basic services, including healthcare, in tatters, a situation exacerbated by last week’s quake.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the junta was restricting aid supplies to quake-hit areas where communities did not back its rule.
Office said it was investigating 53 reported attacks by the junta against opponents, including airstrikes, of which 16 were after the ceasefire was declared on Wednesday.
China, Russia and India were among the first countries to provide support, sending rescue teams to Myanmar to help locate survivors.
The US has traditionally been at the forefront of international disaster relief, but US President Donald Trump has dismantled the country’s humanitarian aid agency.
Washington on Friday said it was adding US$7 million on top of an earlier US$2 million in assistance to Myanmar, but added that it was unfair to expect the nation to keep leading humanitarian relief around the world.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that humanitarian aid needs to be “properly balanced” against other priorities for the US.
“China is a very rich country; India is a rich country,” Rubio told reporters earlier on Friday in Brussels.
“There are a lot of other countries in the world, and everyone should pitch in,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the United States needs to continue to share the burden — 60, 70 percent — of humanitarian aid around the world,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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