U.N. urges relief efforts in Myanmar as earthquake death toll passes 3,400

BANGKOK — The death toll from last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar rose to 3,455, state media said Saturday, as U.N. agencies and foreign aid donors ramped up their emergency relief efforts.

The magnitude 7.7 quake hit a wide swath of the country March 28, causing significant damage to six regions including the capital, Naypyidaw. The temblor left many areas without power or cellphone service amid damaged roads and bridges, making the full extent of the devastation hard to assess.

It also worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis triggered by the country’s civil war that has internally displaced more than 3 million people and left nearly 20 million in need, according to the United Nations.

Myanmar’s second most powerful quake

The military government’s leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has said the earthquake was the second most powerful in the country’s recorded history after a magnitude 8 quake east of Mandalay in May 1912.

Min Aung Hlaing told Cabinet members Saturday that the quake’s death toll has reached 3,455, with 4,840 injured and 214 missing, according to a report on state television MRTV.

He said 5,223 buildings were damaged in the quake in addition to 1,824 schools, 2,752 Buddhist monasterial living quarters, 4,817 pagodas and temples, 167 hospitals and clinics, 169 bridges, 198 dams and 184 sections of the country’s main highway.

A country torn by war

Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021 from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking an armed resistance that analysts now believe controls more territory than the army.

Members of the U.N. Security Council “recognized the need to strengthen rescue, relief and recovery efforts and to scale up immediate and rapid humanitarian assistance in response to the requests to help the people of Myanmar, supported by the international community,” its president, Jerome Bonnafont of France, said in a press statement Friday.

In an apparent reference to the fighting in Myanmar and concerns its military government would block or delay aid to areas under the control of resistance forces, the statement said the council’s members “affirmed the importance of a safe and conducive environment to ensure the timely and effective delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance to all those in need, without disruption or discrimination.”

According to state media, Vice Senior Gen. Soe Win, the vice chairman of the ruling military council, said that any international organizations coming to Myanmar to provide assistance are required to seek prior permission from Myanmar’s authorities, and their efforts will be permitted only when they cooperate with relevant officials.

Aid sparks an unusual diplomatic flurry

Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson for the military government, told reporters Saturday as he returned from a regional summit in Bangkok that prime ministers and other officials from attending countries, including India and Thailand, pledged to provide necessary assistance for relief efforts and rehabilitation in quake-hit areas.

“Everyone helped Myanmar that suffered from the earthquake. Everyone sympathized. Everyone understood. Everyone was willing to help. It can be seen [that] everyone [is] working together practically,” Zaw Min Tun said.

He said that 18 countries were providing assistance to affected areas, and more than 60 aircraft had flown in to transport rescuers and relief supplies.

The U.K. allocated 10 million pounds, about $12.8 million, to the ongoing humanitarian response, its embassy in Yangon said in a statement Saturday, bringing its total to up to 25 million pounds in aid.

There has been an unusual flurry of diplomatic activity in the last few days around Myanmar, also known as Burma, usually reluctant to engage with much of the world community.

Min Aung Hlaing and senior members of his government are shunned and sanctioned by many Western countries for their 2021 coup and human rights abuses. His visit to the meeting in Bangkok, the Thai capital, was his first to a country other than his government’s main backers — China, Russia and Russian ally Belarus — since he attended a regional meeting in Indonesia in 2021.

Back in Myanmar on Saturday, Min Aung Hlaing received Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan and Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa for discussions about relief assistance from fellow members of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, and cooperation on healthcare in quake-affected areas.

Although reports of diplomatic activity focus on earthquake relief, there is awareness that the crisis in Myanmar cannot end until the war there stops, and the country’s neighbors have been leading efforts to find a path to peace, even though neither the military nor its foes have shown any serious effort to negotiate.

A fragile temporary ceasefire

The military and several key armed resistance groups, however, declared a temporary ceasefire Wednesday to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid.

The U.N. Human Rights Office on Friday accused the military of continuing attacks, claiming there were more than 60 attacks after the earthquake, including 16 since the ceasefire.

The opposition’s shadow National Unity Government, which leads resistance to the military government, accused the junta Saturday of carrying out 63 airstrikes and artillery attacks since the earthquake, resulting in the deaths of 68 civilians, including one child and 15 women.

Peck writes for the Associated Press.