The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation.
The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed.
More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses.
Photo: AFP
A UN estimate suggested that more than 3 million people might have been affected by the magnitude 7.7 quake, compounding challenges caused by four years of civil war.
The UN’s top aid official yesterday met with victims in the central Burmese city of Mandalay — situated close to the epicenter and now grappling with severe damage across the city.
“The destruction is staggering,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher wrote on X.
“The world must rally behind the people of Myanmar,” he added.
The new toll was announced after Burmese State Administration Council Chairman Min Aung Hlaing returned from a rare foreign trip to a regional summit in Bangkok on Friday, where he met with leaders including the prime ministers of Thailand and India.
The general’s attendance at the summit courted controversy, with protesters at the venue displaying a banner calling him a “murderer” and anti-junta groups condemning his inclusion.
Min Aung Hlaing reaffirmed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the junta’s plans to hold “free and fair” elections in December, Burmese state media said.
Modi called for a post-quake ceasefire in Myanmar’s civil war to be made permanent, and said the elections needed to be “inclusive and credible,” an Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said.
Critics have derided the planned election as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies.
Since overthrowing the elected civilian government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the military has struggled to run Myanmar, leaving the economy and basic services, including healthcare, in tatters, a situation exacerbated by last week’s quake.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said the junta was restricting aid supplies to quake-hit areas where communities did not back its rule.
Office said it was investigating 53 reported attacks by the junta against opponents, including airstrikes, of which 16 were after the ceasefire was declared on Wednesday.
China, Russia and India were among the first countries to provide support, sending rescue teams to Myanmar to help locate survivors.
The US has traditionally been at the forefront of international disaster relief, but US President Donald Trump has dismantled the country’s humanitarian aid agency.
Washington on Friday said it was adding US$7 million on top of an earlier US$2 million in assistance to Myanmar, but added that it was unfair to expect the nation to keep leading humanitarian relief around the world.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that humanitarian aid needs to be “properly balanced” against other priorities for the US.
“China is a very rich country; India is a rich country,” Rubio told reporters earlier on Friday in Brussels.
“There are a lot of other countries in the world, and everyone should pitch in,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the United States needs to continue to share the burden — 60, 70 percent — of humanitarian aid around the world,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS