Civil war-ravaged Myanmar teeters on the point of collapse after devastating earthquake – as 1000’s are feared useless

The future of war-torn Myanmar is more uncertain than ever after it was struck by a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake on Friday, with the disaster stretching to neighbouring Thailand. 

The full extent of death, injury and destruction was not immediately clear- particularly in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war, and where information is tightly controlled. 

Initial reports said 144 people had been killed in Myanmar, and 10 in in the Thai capital of Bangkok, but it is believed that thousands more have lost their lives. 

But even before the destructive quake hit Myanmar, more than three million people in the country had been displaced, and hundreds of thousands were cut off from vital food and health programs as a result of a bloody four-year civil war that international groups claim has indiscriminately targeted civilians. 

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was already embroiled in turmoil since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. 

After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, with large parts of the country are now entangled in conflict.

Before the quake struck, the United Nations estimated that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been displaced by internal fighting, and there are some 18.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid. 

But following Friday’s disaster, Myanmar’s ruling military junta made a rare plea for international aid and said that blood was in high demand in the hardest-hit areas. 

Speaking to The Telegraph, one unnamed doctor said she feared the healthcare system would not be able to cope, saying that they dud not have ‘enough medical resources, manpower, emergency preparation and management’.

Meanwhile, Tom Andrews, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar told Times Radio that the earthquake could be ‘a disaster on top of disaster’, adding: ‘You’ve got 20 million people in need of humanitarian aid before this earthquake hit. Three and a half internally displaced persons…Half the population falling into poverty…So already you have a very very difficult situation.’

Myanmar researcher at Amnesty International Joe Freeman said: ‘The earthquake could not have come at a worse time’. 

The disaster comes as a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance programs announced earlier this year by U.S. President Donald Trump led to other cuts in services for refugees from Myanmar, including the shutdown of hospital care in camps in neighbouring Thailand where more than 100,000 are living, according to activists and Thai officials.

A recent statement by the World Food Program said that most food rations currently distributed in Myanmar will be cut off in April, even as the country faces a desperate humanitarian crisis. 

The WFP said it would need $60 million to continue food assistance in Myanmar and called on its partners to identify additional funding.

It also added that 15.2 million people, nearly one-third of the total population, are unable to meet their minimum daily food needs, and some 2.3 million face emergency levels of hunger. 

Last week, Tom Andrews, a monitor on rights in Myanmar commissioned by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, laid out the dire health crisis as a result of the drying up of aid. 

Tuberculosis and HIV patients have been missing their medication for weeks; disabled children have been locked out of rehabilitation centers; rights groups have faced cuts in their ability to distribute food and water to people, Andrews said. 

At least 144 people were killed and 732 injured in war-torn Myanmar by the powerful 7.7 magnitude quake which struck near the city of Mandalay this morning.

At least 10 people died Bangkok, where a high-rise under construction collapsed. 

Around 16 people were also injured in the Thai capital, and 101 are missing from three construction sites, including the high rise.  

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul added that there is a possibility more bodies will be found in the rubble of the building. 

MailOnline understands that hundreds of rescue workings remain at the site as they frantically try to pull out construction workers who remain missing. 

Cranes and diggers have been brought in, but according to the BBC, a mountain of debris stands at least 10 storeys tall, hindering their efforts. 

The full extent of death, injury and destruction across the region is not immediately clear, particularly in Myanmar, one of the world’s poorest countries. 

‘The death toll and injuries are expected to rise,’ the head of Myanmar’s military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said in a televised address. 

Myanmar’s government says blood is in high demand in the hardest-hit areas, and has announced a state of emergency in the Mandalay, Sgaing, Magway, northeastern Shan, and Bago regions. 

The United Nations has already allocated $5 million to star relief efforts.

But amid images of buckled and cracked roads and reports of a collapsed bridge and a burst dam, there were concerns about how rescuers would even reach some areas in a country already enduring a humanitarian crisis. 

Myanmar is an active earthquake belt, though many of the temblors happen in sparsely populated areas, not cities like those affected Friday. 

The U.S. Geological Survey, a government science agency, estimated that the death toll could top 1,000.

Myanmar’s English-language state newspaper, Global New Light of Myanmar, said five cities and towns had seen building collapses and two bridges had fallen, including one on a key highway between Mandalay. 

A photo on the newspaper’s website showed wreckage of a sign that read ‘EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT,’ which the caption said was part of the capital’s main 1,000-bed hospital.

Mohammed Riyas, the International Rescue Committee’s Myanmar director, has said in a statement that it could be weeks before the full extent of destruction in the country is known, stressing that the impact is likely to be ‘severe’. 

‘We fear it may be weeks before we understand the full extent of destruction caused by this earthquake, as communication network lines are down and transport is disrupted’ Riyas said.

‘The damage to infrastructure and homes, loss of life, and injuries sustained by communities affected should not be underestimated.

‘The IRC is monitoring the situation and working closely with partners to understand how communities have been affected with a view to launching an emergency response. Search and rescue operations are underway’, he added. 

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR in Myanmar told the BBC that the organisation is trying to comprehend the full extent of the damage caused by the earthquake, but is ready to provide aid ‘as soon as safe routes to Mandalay are secured’. 

US President Donald Trump said the United States will help Myanmar after the country’s ruling military junta, Min Aung Hlaing, made a rare call for help from foreign powers. 

‘We’re going to be helping’, Trump said from the Oval Office today. 

‘We’ve already spoken with the country’, he added.  

Trumps’ comments come as the US embassy in Myanmar said it is suspending ‘non-emergency consular services’ in the wake of the earthquake. 

‘We are suspending non-emergency consular services, including visa services, while continuing American Citizen Services,’ the embassy posted to X. 

Today’s quake is strongest to hit Thailand since the 1839 Ava Earthquake, which the Myanmar Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences estimates measured up to 8.3 in magnitude. The tremor hit present-day central Myanmar, killing hundreds of people.

Thailand was impacted by the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, which was caused by the third most powerful earthquake ever recorded, with an estimated magnitude of 9.25. 

The gigantic undersea tremor struck off the coast of Indonesia and unleashed a series of catastrophic tsunamis across a dozen countries, which obliterated everything in their path and killed an estimated 230,000 people.

‘The death toll and injuries are expected to rise,’ Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military government, said in a televised speech this evening. 

The total number of fatalities is ‘most likely to be in the range 10,000-100,000’, scientists have warned, citing the United States Geological Survey ‘PAGER’ forecast.

The massive quake, with an epicentre near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, struck at midday and was followed by a strong 6.4 magnitude aftershock. 

In Mandalay, the earthquake reportedly brought down multiple buildings, including one of the city’s largest monasteries. 

Photos from the capital city of aypyidaw showed rescue crews pulling victims from the rubble of multiple buildings used to house civil servants.

The 7.7 magnitude earthquake is said to be the most powerful Myanmar has seen in more than 100 years.  

It also hit Thailand, where rescuers in the capital Bangkok were searching in the rubble of a tower block that had been under construction and collapsed.  

The shallow tremor struck central Myanmar at 13.20 local time (6.50GMT), and was followed minutes later by a 6.4-magnitude aftershock.

The quake brought down multiple buildings, including the Ma Soe Yane monastery, one of the largest in Manadalay, and damaged the former royal palace. 

Elsewhere, video posted online showed robed monks in a Mandalay street, shooting their own video of the multistory Ma Soe Yane monastery before it suddenly fell into the ground.

It was not immediately clear whether anyone was harmed. Video also showed damage to the former royal palace. 

Christian Aid said its partners and colleagues on the ground reported that a dam burst in the city, causing water levels to rise in the lowland areas in the area. 

A rescue worker from the Moe Saydanar charity group told Reuters that it had retrieved at least 60 bodies from monasteries and buildings in Pyinmanar, near the capital city of Naypyidaw, and more people were trapped.

‘This 60 is only from my charity group and only at Pyinmanar town,’ he said.

Officials at a major hospital in Naypyidaw declared it a ‘mass casualty area’, with the death toll expected to rise after buildings fell and debris scattered.

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

Myanmar’s military junta is locked in a struggle to put down insurgents fighting its rule, a situation that is likely to complicate the rescue and relief operation.

Professor Ian Main, Personal Chair in Seismology and Rock Physics, School of GeoSciences, at the University of Edinburgh said: ‘The damage is likely to be very severe near the epicentre- based on the estimated intensity of ground shaking above, and maps of population density and vulnerability of buildings. 

The force caused a mosque in Mandalay to collapse, with at least ten worshippers reported to have been killed. 

More than 20 children are also believed to be trapped in a destroyed school in Taungoo, central Myanmar.

• Shallow 7.7 magnitude quake struck central Myanmar at 13.20 local time, just before 7am GMT
• Powerful quakes felt in Myanmar, Thailand, India and China today, causing hundreds of homes to collapse
• Monitoring group warns of tens of thousands of possible fatalities, with numbers still rising 
• Red Cross warns damage to infrastructure in Myanmar could see large dams could burst and flood huge areas
• At least three dead and 90 missing after high-rise apartment block collapses in Bangkok, Thailand
• Two were killed and 20 trapped when an eight-storey hotel in Aung Ben, Myanmar collapsed 

Shocking footage showed workers fleeing in neighbouring Thailand as a 30-storey high-rise building under construction in Bangkok collapsed around them.

A mushroom cloud of dust and debris swept through the streets of northern Bangkok as the high-rise building was brought down by the quake. 

At least three people were killed as the skyscraper toppled and 90 are still missing, Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai told reporters.  

Wechayachai offered no more details about the ongoing rescue efforts, but first responders said that seven people had been rescued so far from the area. 

At least two of the dead were construction workers who were killed by falling rubble or debris, rescue worker Songwut Wangpon told reporters. 

The building was being built by the China Railway Construction Corporation for Thailand’s government auditor general.

Workers in hard hats and orange hi-vis jackets were engulfed by dust as the concrete stack fell, with dozens who couldn’t get away trapped under the rubble.

‘I heard people calling for help, saying ‘help me’,’ Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP. 

‘I fear many lives have been lost. We have never experienced an earthquake with such a devastating impact before.’ 

Startled residents across the city were evacuated down staircases of high-rise buildings and hotels after the earthquake hit around 1.30pm local time. They remained in the streets, seeking shade from the midday sun in the minutes after the quake.

Rescuers at the collapse site were dwarfed by an enormous mound of rubble and tangled metal struts, just metres from the bustling Chatuchak Market, popular with tourists.

Elsewhere, people in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings were cautioned to stay outside in case there were more aftershocks.

Bangkok’s city hall declared the city a disaster area to facilitate the response. The greater metropolitan area is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise apartments.

The US Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ centre for geosciences said the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers(6.2 miles), according to preliminary reports. Shallower earthquakes tend to cause more damage. 

Chelsea King, a British expat living in Bangkok, told MailOnline that she was ushered away from her building by security guards as the initial quake struck.

She said she could see ‘towering skyscrapers … visibly swaying’.

‘Many of these buildings are condos or hotels with rooftop pools, and water was cascading down like waterfalls due to the force of the tremors.

‘The street was chaotic, with people running out of buildings, carrying pets and children, shouting in panic.

‘I was in shock, unable to process what I was seeing – it felt like something out of a disaster film.’

When they were finally allowed back in, she was able to rescue her cat, Mo, and pack a small bag of necessities before escaping down eight flights of stairs.

Chelsea was fortunate that her building ‘appears undamaged’. But she says friends are unable to return to their homes due to structural damage.

‘My partner, who teaches on the city’s outskirts, is also struggling to get back home, with the BTS and MRT [metro system] shut down and the roads at a standstill.’ 

Kelly Rhodes, a tourist staying at the Okura Prestige in Bangkok, told MailOnline they were evacuated down 24 flights of stairs when the quake struck.

As airlines began to halt some flights, she said: ‘We are now trying to organise flights out but it’s chaos.’

‘We can’t get out of the city. Traffic is at a standstill total gridlock.’

The earthquake was forceful enough to send water sloshing out of pools, some high above the street in high-rises, as the tremor shook.

Witnesses in Bangkok said people ran out onto the streets in panic, many of them hotel guests in bathrobes and swimming costumes as water cascaded down from an elevated pool at a luxury hotel. 

‘All of a sudden the whole building began to move, immediately there was screaming and a lot of panic,’ said Fraser Morton, a tourist from Scotland, who was in one of Bangkok’s many malls shopping for camera equipment.

‘I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators, lots of banging and crashing inside the mall.’

Like thousands of others in downtown Bangkok, Morton sought refuge in Benjasiri Park – away from the tall buildings all around.

‘I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense,’ he said. ‘Lots of chaos.’

Mandy Tang, 38, from London, was in a cinema in Bangkok on holiday when she experienced the tremors from the powerful earthquake.

She told the PA news agency: ‘I was watching a film called The Red Envelope. It happened to be quite an action-packed scene when the shake happened, so I initially thought it could have been Imax effect.

‘I looked around and none of the local audience left their seats. However, my Taiwanese friend insisted it’s an earthquake, so I walked out of the theatre with her, and we met the security guards coming to evacuate us just outside the theatre. We could see the doors were opening and closing, all the chairs were shaking.’

At a 1,000-bed general hospital in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, rows of wounded were treated outside the emergency department, some writhing in pain, others lying still as relatives sought to comfort them.

‘About 20 people died after they arrived at our hospital so far. Many people were injured,’ said a doctor at the hospital, who requested anonymity. 

The quake also damaged religious shrines in the capital, sending parts toppling to the ground, and some homes. 

In Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and close to the epicenter, the earthquake damaged part of the former royal palace and buildings, according to videos and photos released on Facebook social media.

While the area is prone to earthquakes, it is generally sparsely populated, and most houses are low-rise structures.

In the Sagaing region just southwest of Mandalay, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and some sections of the highway connecting Mandalay and Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were also damaged.

The Red Cross warned that there was still concern for the state of large dams, exposing risk of flooding.

‘Public infrastructure has been damaged, including roads, bridges and public buildings,’ Marie Manrique, Program Coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross told reporters.

‘We currently have concerns for large-scale dams that people are watching to see the conditions of them,’ she said.

‘The bridge that connects Mandalay to Sagaing has collapsed – this will cause logistical issues. Sagaing has the largest number of internally displaced people in the country.’

The earthquake hit Myanmar as it contests with a four-year civil war. 

The devastation prompted a rare request for international aid from the country’s isolated military junta, which has lost swathes of territory to armed groups, as it declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday the 27-nation bloc stood ready to help after a strong, deadly earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand.

‘Heartbreaking scenes from Myanmar and Thailand after the devastating earthquake. My thoughts are with the victims and their families,’ von der Leyen wrote on X. ‘Europe’s Copernicus satellites are already helping first responders. We are ready to provide more support.’

The World Health Organization said it had triggered its emergency management system in response to Friday’s ‘huge’ earthquake in Myanmar and was mobilising its logistics hub in Dubai to prepare trauma injury supplies.

The WHO is coordinating its earthquake response from its Geneva headquarters ‘because we see this as a huge event’ with ‘clearly a very, very big threat to life and health’, spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a media briefing. 

‘We’ve activated our logistics hub to look particularly for trauma supplies and things like external fixators because we expect that there will be many, many injuries that need to be dealt with,’ Harris said.

She said the WHO would also be concentrating on getting in essential medicines, while the health infrastructure in Myanmar itself might be damaged.

Harris said that due to recent experience with the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, ‘we know very well what you need to send in first’. 

Tremors were also felt in China’s southwest Yunnan province, according to Beijing’s quake agency, which said the jolt measured 7.9 in magnitude.

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.

The breakneck pace of development in Myanmar’s cities, combined with crumbling infrastructure and poor urban planning, has also made the country’s most populous areas vulnerable to earthquakes and other disasters, experts say.

The impoverished Southeast Asian nation has a strained medical system, especially in its rural states.