Rescue crews in Myanmar pulled a 26-year-old man out alive from the rubble of the capital city hotel where he worked early on Wednesday, but most teams were finding only bodies five days after a massive earthquake hit the country.
After using an endoscopic camera to pinpoint Naing Lin Tun’s location in the rubble and confirm that he was alive, crews gingerly pulled the man through a hole jackhammered through a floor and loaded him on to a gurney nearly 108 hours after he was trapped in the hotel where he worked.
Shirtless and covered in dust, Naing Lin Tun appeared weak but conscious in a video released by the local fire department, as he was fitted with an IV drip and taken away. State-run MRTV reported that the rescue in the city of Naypyitaw was carried out by Turkish and local teams and took more than nine hours.
The 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit midday on Friday, toppling thousands of buildings, collapsing bridges and buckling roads. The death toll rose to 3,003 on Wednesday, with more than 4,500 people injured, MRTV reported. Local reports suggest much higher figures.
The earthquake also rocked neighbouring Thailand, causing the collapse of a highrise building under construction in Bangkok. One body was removed from the rubble early on Wednesday, raising the death total in Bangkok to 22, with 34 injured, primarily at the construction site.
Mine cave-in
Myanmar has been wracked by civil war between the ruling junta and rebel groups, and the earthquake is making a dire humanitarian crisis even worse, with more than three million people displaced from their homes and nearly 20 million in need even before it hit, according to the United Nations.
Myanmar’s ruling military declared a temporary ceasefire in the country’s civil war on Wednesday to facilitate relief efforts.
The announcement followed unilateral temporary ceasefires announced by armed resistance groups opposed to military rule.
On Tuesday, Tom Andrews, a monitor on rights in Myanmar commissioned by the UN-backed Human Rights Council, said on X that military attacks must stop to facilitate aid.
“The focus in Myanmar must be on saving lives, not taking them,” he said.
Countries have pledged millions in assistance to help Myanmar and humanitarian aid organizations with the monumental task ahead.
India has flown in aid and sent two Navy ships with supplies, as well as providing some 200 rescue workers. Multiple other countries have sent teams, including 270 people from China, 212 from Russia and 122 from the United Arab Emirates.
A three-person team from the U.S. Agency for International Development arrived Tuesday to determine how best to respond given limited U.S. resources, due to the slashing of the foreign aid budget and dismantling of the agency as an independent operation. Washington said on the weekend it would provide $2 million in emergency assistance.
Most of the details from Myanmar so far have come from Mandalay, the second-largest city, which was near the epicentre of the earthquake, and the capital, Naypyitaw, about 270 kilometres north of Mandalay.
Many areas are without power, telephone or cell connections, and difficult to reach by road, but more reports are beginning to trickle in.
In Singu township, about 65 kilometres north of Mandalay, 27 gold miners were killed in a cave-in, the independent Democratic Voice of Burma reported.
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2025-03-28 16:12:36
