At least 144 people have been killed and 732 injured after a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on Friday, according to state-run MRTV.
The disaster has prompted Myanmar’s isolated military junta to make a rare request for international assistance as buildings collapsed across the affected region.
Eight people have died in neighbouring Thailand, Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt confirmed, including seven at a collapsed high-rise construction site in the capital.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has triggered its emergency management system in response to what it described as a “huge event” with “clearly a very, very big threat to life and health,” spokesperson Margaret Harris told reporters.
“We’ve activated our logistics hub to look particularly for trauma supplies and things like external fixators because we expect that there will be many, many injuries that need to be dealt with,” Harris said at a media briefing.
The WHO is coordinating earthquake response from its Geneva headquarters and mobilising its Dubai logistics hub to prepare essential medicines and trauma injury supplies, drawing on experience from the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes.
“We are ready to move in – but now we have to know exactly where, what and why. It’s information from the ground that’s really critical right now,” Harris added.
Meanwhile, a key U.S. programme for international disaster assistance faces limitations in responding to the crisis. Reuters reported that the U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs), which typically deploy within 24 to 48 hours of major emergencies, can no longer function normally due to a funding freeze at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Trump administration.
The DARTs, which previously responded to disasters including the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed 300,000 people and the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster, are currently operating in Afghanistan, Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine but with significant constraints, according to USAID employees who spoke anonymously to Reuters.
The earthquake has damaged buildings across Myanmar and caused tremors felt throughout Thailand, with rescue efforts continuing as authorities assess the full scale of destruction.
Read more:
