An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 that shook this Friday the center-norte of Burma (Myanmar) left hundreds of dead and injured in the country, where the military government declared the state of emergency and made an unusual request for international aid, and also caused victims in neighboring Thailand.
The tremor was recorded this Friday at 12:50 local time (6:20 GMT), 10 kilometers deep and with the epicenter about 17 kilometers from Mandalay, the second largest city of Burma, according to the United States Geological Service (USGS).
Look: pain and destruction in Burma after powerful earthquake that also affected Thailand | PHOTOS
“All buildings are completely shattered (…) It has been chaos,” a 40 -year -old woman from Naipyidó, the Burmese capital, one of the areas affected by the earthquake, told Efe.
“It has been frightening. I was trapped at home for a few minutes,” he added through the Facebook messages.
The Birmanos Armed Forces, which hold power in Burma from the 2021 coup d’etat, which plunged the country into semi -art and conflict, have declared the state of emergency in six zones: Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway, Shan, Naipyidó and Bago.
The Board spokesman, Zaw Min Tun, informed Efe for mobile messaging that there are at least 200 dead and 730 injured in the country, where telecommunications and infrastructure have been severely affected, which has hindered the counting of victims and their rescue.
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The Chief of the Board, Min Aung Hlaing, said in a broadcast intervention on state television that there are at least 144 deaths.
“The dead and injured number is expected to increase,” he said.
The earthquake, the general added, left 96 dead in Naipyidó, 18 in the central region of Sagaing, and 30 in Kyaukse (in the Mandalay region).
Sources on the ground told Efe that the Army also informed international organizations of another 39 dead in the state of Shan, border with China.
For its part, the United States Geological Service, which measures the seismic activity worldwide, declared the orange alert – the second most serious – and pointed out that the number of deceased can be between 100 and 1,000 people.
The center’s measurements taking into account the epicenter of the tremor indicate that 7,000 people have been exposed “to violent shakes”; 2.8 million to “deep shaking”, and more than 10 million to “strong or very strong shaking.”
“The disaster could be widespread. The previous orange alerts have required a regional or national response,” he noted in a statement.
In this regard, the Military Board made an unusual call for international aid after decreeing the state of emergency, the military spokesman confirmed to Efe.
The request now contrasts with the reaction to other disasters, in which the obstruction of the regime to international aid has been denounced.
In 2008, after the impact of Ciclón Nargis in 2008, the military authorities of that time took to ask for assistance, which harmed the victims of a disaster that caused at least 138,000 dead.
A worker from a mandalay rescue team told Efe today that they do not have the necessary tools to search among the debris, and that for now they are limited to “transporting patients and bodies” of deaths.
EFE images show workers taking survivors from among the debris of collapsed buildings in Naipyidó, with the neighbors helping in the tasks.
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Bangkok collapsed buildings
The earthquake was also felt in neighboring countries such as Thailand, where Prime Minister, PaetongTran Shinawatra, declared the state of emergency in the capital, with at least ten people deceased, 16 wounds and more than 100 disappeared by the collapse of three buildings under construction.
In Bangkok, about 1,000 kilometers from the epicenter, the tremor was felt throughout the city, in which buildings were evacuated during the day, while the rescue tasks in the most affected construction continue, located near the popular Chatuchak market, in which there are dozens of missing and where at least eight people died.
Emergency equipment, as EFE could observe, use drones from the incident to accelerate the search for more survivors.
The earthquake also felt intensity in several cities in the Chinese province of Yunnan (South), bordering Burma, although for the moment the reported damages have been minor.
The Burma earthquake could be the largest in the area in three quarters of the century, and a combination of size and shallow will maximize the possibilities of damage, according to various experts, which caught attention to the risk of the quality of the constructions.
Burma is plunged into a spiral of economic crisis and conflict from the assonated, with clashes in much of the country between the army and civil and prodemocratic guerrillas.
“This earthquake could not have arrived at the worse time for Burma,” said the Burma in Burma of Amnesty International (AI), Joe Freeman.