Myanmar holds minute's silence as quake deaths rise

MANDALAY, Myanmar, April 2 ------ Myanmar held a minute's silence in tribute to the victims of a catastrophic earthquake that has killed more than 2,000 people, buckling roads and flattening buildings as far away as Bangkok. Four days after the shallow 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck, many people in Myanmar are still sleeping outdoors, either unable to return to ruined homes or afraid of further aftershocks. Sirens rang out at 12:51:02 (local time) the precise time the quake struck on Friday bringing the Southeast Asian country to a standstill to remember those lost.  

Mandalay, the country's second-biggest city with 1.7 million inhabitants, suffered some of the worst destruction. Outside the Sky Villa apartment complex, one of the city's worst-hit disaster sites, rescue workers stopped and lined up with hands clasped behind their backs to pay their respects.  

Officials and attendants stood behind a cordon, watching relatives further back, as the sirens wailed and a Myanmar flag flew at half-staff from a bamboo pole tied to a rescue tent. The moment of remembrance is part of a week of national mourning declared by the military government, with flags to fly at half-staff on official buildings until April 6 "in sympathy for the loss of life and damages." 

The junta said on Monday that 2,056 people have been confirmed dead, with more than 3,900 injured and 270 missing. At least 20 people died in neighboring Thailand. But the toll is expected to rise significantly as rescuers reach towns and villages where communications have been cut off by the quake. 

More than 1,000 foreign rescuers have flown in to help and Myanmar state media reported that nearly 650 people have been pulled alive from ruined buildings around the country. The dead include around 500 Muslims killed while offering Friday prayers in mosques when the quake struck, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported. 

Sleeping in the open 

Hundreds of Mandalay residents spent a fourth night sleeping in the open, with their homes destroyed or fearing aftershocks would cause more damage. "I don't feel safe. There are six or seven-floor buildings beside my house leaning, and they can collapse anytime," Soe Tint, a watchmaker, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after sleeping outside. 

Around the city, apartment complexes have been flattened, a Buddhist religious complex eviscerated, and hotels crumpled and twisted into ruins. At an examination hall, where part of the building collapsed on hundreds of monks taking an exam, book bags were piled on a table outside, the uncollected belongings of the victims. Fire engines and heavy-lifting vehicles were parked outside and an Indian rescue team worked on the pancaked remains of the building. The smell was "very high," one Indian officer said. The stench of bodies rotting in the heat was unmistakable at several disaster sites around the city. On the outskirts of Mandalay, a crematorium has received hundreds of bodies for disposal, with many more to come as victims are dug out of the rubble. 

International aid effort 

Even before Friday's quake, Myanmar's 50 million people were suffering, the country ravaged by four years of civil war sparked when the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government in February 2021. The United Nations says at least 3.5 million people were displaced by the conflict before the quake, many of them at risk of hunger. The junta says it is doing its best to respond to the disaster but there have been multiple reports in recent days of the military carrying out airstrikes on armed groups opposed to its rule, even as the country reels from the quake's devastation. 

In response to the quake, junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for foreign assistance, breaking with the isolated ruling generals' customary practice of shunning help from abroad in the wake of major disasters. International aid efforts since the quake have included an emergency appeal from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for $100 million to help victims. Hundreds of kilometers away, authorities in Bangkok said the death toll in Thailand's capital had risen to 20, with the vast majority killed when a 30-story skyscraper under construction collapsed. 

Source: manilatimes.net