Myanmar declares week of mourning as quake toll passes 2,000

MANDALAY: Myanmar declared a week of national mourning on Monday over the country’s devastating earthquake, as the death toll passed 2,000 and hopes faded of finding more survivors in the rubble of ruined buildings.

National flags will fly at half-mast until April 6 “in sympathy for the loss of life and damages” from Friday’s massive quake, the ruling junta said in a statement.

The junta also announced a minute’s silence on Tuesday, to begin at 12:51:02 p.m. (0621 GMT) — the precise time the 7.7-magnitude quake struck.

People should stop where they are to pay tribute to the victims, the junta said, while media should halt broadcasting and show mourning symbols, and prayers will be offered at temples and pagodas.

The announcement came as the tempo and urgency of rescue efforts wound down in Mandalay, one of the worst-affected cities and the country’s second-largest, with more than 1.7 million inhabitants.

“The situation is so dire that it’s hard to express what is happening,” said Aung Myint Hussein, chief administrator of Mandalay’s Sajja North mosque.

People prepared to camp out in the streets across Mandalay for a fourth successive night, either unable to return to ruined homes or nervous about the repeated aftershocks that rattled the city over the weekend.

Some have tents but many, including young children, have been bedding down on blankets in the middle of roads, trying to keep as far from buildings as possible for fear of falling masonry.

The junta said Monday that 2,056 have now been confirmed, with more than 3,900 people injured and 270 still missing, but the toll is expected to rise significantly.

Three Chinese nationals are among the dead, China’s state media said, along with two French people, according to the foreign ministry in Paris.

At least 19 deaths have been confirmed hundreds of kilometers away in Thailand’s capital Bangkok, where the force of the quake caused a 30-story tower block under construction to collapse.

Mandalay’s 1,000-bed general hospital has been evacuated, with hundreds of patients being treated outside.

Patients lay on gurneys in the hospital car park, many with only a thin tarpaulin rigged up to shield them from the fierce tropical sun.

Relatives did their best to comfort them, holding hands or waving bamboo fans over them.

“We’re trying to do what we can here. We are trying our best,” said one medic, who asked to remain anonymous.

The sticky heat has exhausted rescue workers and accelerated body decomposition, which could complicate identification.

But traffic began returning to the streets of Mandalay on Monday, and restaurants and street vendors resumed work.

Hundreds of Muslims gathered outside a destroyed mosque in the city for the first prayer of Eid Al-Fitr, the holiday that follows the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.

The challenges facing the Southeast Asian country of more than 50 million people were immense even before the earthquake.

Myanmar has been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021, with its economy shattered and health care and infrastructure badly damaged.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the quake a top-level emergency as it urgently sought $8 million to save lives, while the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an appeal for more than $100 million.

International aid and rescue teams have been arriving after junta chief Min Aung Hlaing made an exceptionally rare appeal for foreign assistance.

In the past, isolated Myanmar’s ruling generals have shunned foreign assistance, even after major natural disasters.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun thanked key allies China and Russia for their help, as well as India, and said the authorities were doing their best.

“We are trying and giving treatment to injured people and searching for missing ones,” he told journalists.

But reports have emerged of the military carrying out air strikes on armed groups opposed to its rule, even as Myanmar grapples with the quake’s aftermath.

One ethnic minority armed group told AFP on Sunday that seven of its fighters were killed in an aerial attack soon after the quake, and there were reports of more air strikes on Monday.

Myanmar’s raging civil war, pitting the military against a complex array of anti-coup fighters and ethnic minority armed groups, has displaced around 3.5 million people.

In Bangkok, diggers continued to clear the vast pile of rubble at the site of the collapsed building.

Officials say they have not given up hope of finding more survivors in the wreckage, where 12 deaths have been confirmed and at least 75 people are still unaccounted for.