The death toll in both Myanmar and Thailand passed 700 on Saturday, as rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings in a desperate search for survivors.
A rescue team from Yunnan Province – that borders Myanmar – arrived on Saturday morning at Yangon in Myanmar to provide assistance.
Xinhua news agency said the only highway linking Myanmar’s Yangon in the south and central Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay was severely damaged.
The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck northwest of the city of Sagaing in central Myanmar in the early afternoon on Friday, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.
The quake destroyed buildings, downed bridges, and buckled roads across swathes of Myanmar, with severe damage reported in the second-biggest city, Mandalay.
At least 694 people were killed and nearly 1,700 injured in Myanmar’s Mandalay region – believed to be the worst affected – the ruling junta said in a statement. Around 10 more deaths have been confirmed in Bangkok.
But with communications badly-disrupted, the true scale of the disaster has yet to emerge, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.
It was the biggest quake to hit Myanmar in over a century, according to US geologists, and the tremors were powerful enough to severely damage buildings across Bangkok, hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre.
Rescuers in the Thai capital laboured through the night searching for workers trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed, reduced in seconds to a pile of rubble and twisted metal by the force of the shaking.
Up to 100 workers were still unaccounted for at the building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market that is a magnet for tourists. (Agencies)
