The official death toll of the earthquake that shattered central Myanmar surpassed 1,600 people, the country’s military leaders said on Saturday, as desperate rescue workers raced to find survivors and began grappling with a monumental disaster in a nation already racked by civil war.
The powerful earthquake struck on Friday near Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, and volunteer emergency workers there combed through the ruins of apartments, monasteries and mosques in search of anyone left alive. Stepping over downed power lines and buckled roads, crews toiled as the repressive military authorities kept a watchful eye.
“There are at least a hundred people still trapped inside,” said Thaw Zin, a volunteer who was sitting in front of a destroyed condominium. “We are trying our best with what we have.”
The death toll is expected to rise steeply, although Myanmar’s military junta, which overthrew an elected government in 2021, has sought to restrict what information leaves the country. Preliminary modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey suggested the number of deaths could be more than 10,000.
The earthquake has raised questions about whether Myanmar’s military rulers can manage to stay in power, having already lost ground to rebels amid a bloody civil war that has left nearly 20 million of the country’s roughly 54 million people without enough food or shelter even before the quake, according to U.N. officials.
Even after the disaster struck, Myanmar military jets dropped bombs on Friday evening on a rebel-held village, Naung Lin, in northern Shan State. “I just can’t believe they did airstrikes at the same time as the earthquake,” said Lway Yal Oo, a Naung Lin resident.
The National Unity Government, the shadow government, said on Saturday that it would implement a two-week pause in offensive military operations by armed groups over which it has control in quake-hit areas beginning on Sunday. But the shadow authority, made up of opposition politicians and others committed to democratic rule, reserved the right to act defensively.
Parts of rebel-held Myanmar were among those hit, and anti-military forces in the Sagaing region were using elephants to help clear destroyed roads, the shadow government said.
Anger against the military was rising in the wake of the disaster on Saturday. Mr. Thaw Zin, the volunteer in Mandalay, said that soldiers and police officers had turned up at disaster sites but did nothing to help. “They are here hanging around with their guns,” he said. “We don’t need guns, we need helping hands and kind hearts.”
But the junta has also acknowledged the enormous extent of the catastrophe, which caused the collapse of a building 600 miles away in Bangkok and sent shock waves around Southeast Asia. The military government declared a state of emergency in six regions of Myanmar, including rebel-controlled areas where millions of displaced people live with scarce internet.
The army’s leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, surveyed disaster sites on Friday and visited a makeshift hospital in Naypyitaw, about 170 miles south of Mandalay, state media showed.
The junta, although isolated and under sanctions from much of the world, also made an extraordinary appeal for help — a call that some began to answer despite the dizzying logistical obstacles in getting that aid to survivors.
Aid workers will have to traverse collapsed roads and devastated regions, in a country divided by full-blown civil war and competing warlords, arms dealers, human traffickers and drug syndicates. There are risks that the military could interfere in the delivery of aid, experts said, and even transferring funds into Myanmar are complicated by the rules involving sanctions and the movement of money.
India, which shares a long border with Myanmar, sent 15 tons of aid and more than 100 medical specialists, its foreign minister said, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he had spoken to the junta’s chief, offering help to “a close friend and neighbor.”
China, which also borders Myanmar and which has supplied the junta weapons even as evidence grew of its military atrocities, flew dozens of search and rescue workers into the country on Saturday. Beijing also planned to send nearly $14 million in aid, including tents, first aid kits and drinking water, according to Chinese state media.
South Korea promised $2 million in aid, shipped through international humanitarian agencies, and Malaysia’s government said it would send two teams of 50 people to support relief work.
But it remained far from clear what kind of response some of the world’s wealthiest nations would provide, or how. Although President Trump said the United States would “be helping,” his administration has moved to all but eliminate the main U.S. agency for distributing aid, and the United States, Britain and other countries have imposed heavy sanctions on the junta.
Even for countries friendlier to Myanmar’s military rulers, there are major hurdles. The early deliveries of help sent by India and China went to Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. They would have to drive hundreds of miles north to reach Mandalay and other areas most affected by the earthquake.
In the disaster area, where roads are damaged and destroyed and power is largely gone, people tried to stock up on fuel and food. Dozens of people from other cities in Myanmar also packed their cars and vans with supplies and headed into Mandalay, hoping to pitch in.
Ambulances jammed Mandalay’s streets on Saturday, heading to a hospital two hours away that had more room. Among the mounds of brick, cement and metal where buildings had stood two days earlier, some people began to lose hope.
“Yesterday we found some survivors, but today the chances are much lower,” said Ko Thien Win, who had rushed to the site of a destroyed apartment building in Mandalay.
At hospitals, many others were left in a kind of purgatory, dealing with their own injuries and fearing for the fate of their loved ones. Tay Zar Lin had been picking mangoes when the ground started shaking on Friday and he fell, breaking his leg. He reached a hospital, where he could not see a doctor until Saturday morning.
He then discovered that his wife was still trapped inside the tailor shop where she worked, he said. “I pray that yesterday morning wasn’t the last time I saw her,” he said.
The uncertainty extended far outside Myanmar, into the diaspora of people who have migrated out of the country in past decades. Richard Nee, one of tens of thousands now living in Taiwan, said he and other former residents of Mandalay were waiting for word from friends and family. He knew the wife of one friend had died, apparently in a building collapse, but that sporadic communication had made it hard to learn more.
An engineer, he said many buildings in Myanmar, which lies on one of the world’s most active seismic zones, had been built to endure earthquakes. “Many buildings were strong enough for maybe a magnitude 6 earthquake,” he said. “But anything above magnitude 6, like this time, was too much.”
And many survivors of the earthquake already know their loved ones’ fates.
When the earthquake struck and her apartment in Mandalay began to heave, Su Wai Lin, who is six months pregnant, managed to escape the building with her husband and mother-in-law. But she said her husband ran back inside to save their 90-year-old neighbor. Then the building collapsed, killing them.
“I can’t put into words the pain I feel,” she said, weeping as she spoke at a hospital. “My child will be born without a father.”
David Pierson contributed reporting from Hong Kong, Mujib Mashal from New Delhi, Choe Sang-Hun and Shawn Paik from Seoul, Chris Buckley from Taiwan, Jenny Gross from London and Hannah Beech from Boston.
