BANGKOK – Long-shot efforts to find survivors from Myanmar’s devastating March 28 earthquake were winding down Monday, as rescue efforts were supplanted by increasing relief and recovery activity. The death toll surpassed 3,600 and was still climbing.
A situation report issued late Monday by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said more than 17.2 million people are living in affected areas, and urgently need food, drinking water, health care, cash assistance and emergency shelter.
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In the capital, Naypyitaw, people cleared debris and collected wood from their damaged houses under drizzling rain, and soldiers removed wreckage at some Buddhist monasteries.
Myanmar Fire Services Department said Monday that rescue teams had recovered 10 bodies from the rubble of a collapsed building in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second biggest city.
It said international rescuers from Singapore, Malaysia and India had returned to their countries after their work to find survivors was considered completed. The number of rescue teams operating in the residential areas of Naypyitaw has been steadily decreasing.
The 7.7 magnitude quake hit a wide swath of the country, causing significant damage to six regions and states. The earthquake left many areas without power, telephone or cell connections and damaged roads and bridges, making the full extent of the devastation hard to assess.
Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for the military government, said late Monday that the quake’s death toll has reached 3,600, with 5,017 injured and 160 missing. He said search and rescue operations involved 1,738 personnel from 20 countries, and had helped find and extract 653 survivors.
He also said the quake has officially been named “the Big Mandalay Earthquake” to ensure consistency in future documentation and referencing. Previous significant earthquakes also received official names.
“Entire communities have been upended, forcing people to seek shelter in makeshift conditions, disrupting markets, worsening psychosocial distress and bringing essential services—including running water, sanitation and health—to the verge of collapse,” said the report from OCHA.
“People left homeless by the earthquakes are exposed to extreme heat during the country’s hottest and driest month of the year, and rains have already started in Mandalay — posing an additional threat to those sheltering in the open,” it noted.
Myanmar’s military government and its battlefield opponents, meanwhile, have been trading accusations over alleged violations of ceasefire declarations each had declared to ease earthquake relief efforts.
Reports of continued fighting
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army’s 2021 takeover ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which led to nationwide peaceful protests that escalated into armed resistance and what now amounts to civil war.
Although the military government and its armed opponents declared unilateral ceasefires for a temporary period, reports of continued fighting are widespread, with the army receiving the most criticism for continuing aerial bombing, according to independent Myanmar media and eyewitnesses.
Independent confirmation of fighting is difficult because of the remoteness of the areas in which much of it takes place and restrictions on journalists.
The Three Brotherhood Alliance, a trio of powerful ethnic minority guerrilla armies, declared a unilateral temporary ceasefire on April 1, following an earlier declaration by the opposition National Unity Government, or NUG.
The NUG, which leads the pro-democracy resistance, said its armed wing, the People’s Defense Force, would cease offensive actions for two weeks.
On Wednesday, the army announced a similar unilateral ceasefire, as did another ethnic minority group among its foes, the Kachin Independence Organization.
All sides reserved the right to act in self-defense.
The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, and the Arakan Army, both members of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, separately accused the army of continuing attacks.
Declaring its ceasefire
The shadow National Unity Government on Saturday accused the military of carrying out 63 airstrikes and artillery attacks since the earthquake, resulting in the deaths of 68 civilians, including one child and 15 women.
However, military spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said in an audio message to journalists on Saturday that the groups in the Three Brotherhood Alliance and the Kachin Independence Army, as well as the Karen National Union in southeastern Myanmar and pro-democracy forces in the central Magway region and other groups violated the ceasefires by attacking the army.
“We are carrying out relief and assistance efforts for the people affected by the earthquake. I am saying this to make everyone aware of the ceasefire violations at a time like this,” Zaw Min Tun said.
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Associated Press writer Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.