Myanmar quake: Death toll hits 1,000 as int’l aid begins to come

BANGKOK, March 29 (SABAH): Foreign rescue teams began flying into Myanmar on Saturday to aid the search for survivors from an earthquake that killed more than 1,000 people in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation crippling critical infrastructure amid a grinding civil war.

The death toll in Myanmar was 1,002, the military government said on Saturday, up sharply from initial state media reports of 144 dead. At least nine people were killed in neighbouring Thailand, where the 7.7 magnitude quake rattled buildings and brought down a skyscraper under construction in the capital Bangkok, trapping 30 people under debris, with 49 missing.

The U.S. Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated the death toll could exceed 10,000 in Myanmar and that losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.

The quake damaged roads, bridges and buildings in Myanmar, according to the junta, whose top general made a rare call for international assistance on Friday.

“Search and rescue operations are currently being carried out in the affected areas,” the junta said in a statement on state media on Saturday.

A Chinese rescue team arrived in Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon, hundreds of kilometres from the hard-hit cities on Mandalay and Naypyitaw, the country’s purpose-built capital, where parts of a 1,000-bed hospital were damaged.