BANGKOK (Reuters) – People were pulled alive out of rubble in Myanmar and signs of life were detected in the ruins of a skyscraper in Bangkok on Monday as efforts intensified to find survivors three days after a massive earthquake that killed around 2,000.
Rescuers freed four people, including a pregnant woman and a girl, from collapsed buildings in Mandalay, the city in Myanmar near the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
Signs of life were detected under the rubble of an under-construction skyscraper in the Thai capital that collapsed in the quake, Bangkok’s Deputy Governor Tavida Kamolvej said.
Rescuers were urgently working out how to access the area it came from, given three days had passed since the quake, she said.
By medical standards, realistic chances of survival diminish after 72 hours, she said, adding: “We have to speed up. We’re not going to stop even after 72 hours.”
Thailand’s official death toll was at 18 on Sunday, but could shoot up with 76 people remaining missing at the site of the collapsed building. Scanning machines and sniffer dogs were being used to detect signs of life.
In Myanmar, state media said at least 1,700 people have been confirmed dead as of Sunday and that the military government had declared a week-long mourning period from Monday. The Wall Street Journal, citing the junta, reported the death toll had reached 2,028 in Myanmar.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the new death toll. Media access has been restricted in the country since the junta took power in 2021.
China, India and Thailand are among Myanmar’s neighbors that have sent relief materials and teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.
“It doesn’t matter how long we work. The most important thing is that we can bring hope to the local people,” said Yue Xin, head of the China Search and Rescue Team that pulled people of the rubble in Mandalay, Xinhua reported.
The United Nations said it was rushing relief supplies to survivors in central Myanmar.
“Our teams in Mandalay are joining efforts to scale up the humanitarian response despite going through the trauma themselves,” said Noriko Takagi, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Myanmar.
The United States pledged $2 million in aid “through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organizations”. It said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAID, which is undergoing massive cuts under the Trump administration, is deploying to Myanmar.
The quake devastation has piled more misery on Myanmar, already in chaos from a civil war that grew out of a nationwide uprising after the military coup ousted the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
One rebel group said Myanmar’s ruling military was still conducting airstrikes on villages in the aftermath of the quake, and Singapore’s foreign minister called for an immediate ceasefire to help relief efforts.
Critical infrastructure – including bridges, highways, airports and railways – across the country of 55 million lie damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts while the conflict that has battered the economy, displaced over 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system rages on.
(Reporting by Bangkok Bureau, Shoon Naing, Wa Lone; Writing by Kay Johnson and John Mair; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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