Myanmar earthquake: Woman rescued from rubble, efforts on to find more survivors

Bangkok: Rescuers in Myanmar freed a woman from the ruins of a hotel on Monday, officials said. This offered a glimmer of hope three days after a massive earthquake killed approximately 2,000 people. Search and rescue efforts in Myanmar and Thailand continued, racing against time to find more survivors. The woman was pulled from the rubble of the collapsed Great Wall Hotel in Mandalay after being trapped for 60 hours. A five-hour operation, involving Chinese, Russian, and local teams, was required, according to a Facebook post from the Chinese embassy. The post stated that she was in stable condition early Monday morning.

Mandalay is near the epicentre of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Friday that wreaked mass devastation in Myanmar and damage in neighbouring Thailand. In Bangkok, Thailand's capital, emergency crews using cranes and dog sniffers on Monday continued a desperate search for 76 people believed buried under the rubble of an under-construction skyscraper that collapsed.

Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt said rescuers are not giving up despite the conventional-wisdom window for finding people alive fast approaching. "The search will continue even after 72 hours because in Turkey, people who have been trapped for a week have survived. The search has not been cancelled," Chadchart said.

He said machine scans of the rubble indicated there may still be people alive underneath, and dog sniffers are being dispatched to try to pinpoint their locations. "We've detected weak life signs and there are many spots," he said.

Thailand's official death toll was at 18 on Sunday, but could shoot up without more rescues at the collapsed building site. In Myanmar, state media said at least 1,700 people have been confirmed dead. The Wall Street Journal, citing the ruling military junta, reported the death toll had reached 2,028 in Myanmar. Reuters could not immediately confirm the new death toll. The United Nations said it was rushing relief supplies to estimated 23,000 quake-hit survivors in central Myanmar.

"Our teams in Mandalay are joining efforts to scale up the humanitarian response despite going through the trauma themselves," said Noriko Takagi, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Myanmar. "Time is of the essence as Myanmar needs global solidarity and support through this immense devastation."

India, China and Thailand are among Myanmar's neighbours that have sent relief materials and teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia. The United States pledged $2 million in aid "through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organizations". It said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAID, which is undergoing massive cuts under the Trump administration, is deploying to Myanmar.

The quake devastation has piled more misery on Myanmar, already in chaos from a civil war that grew out of a nationwide uprising after a 2021 military coup ousted the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

One rebel group said Myanmar's ruling military was still conducting air strikes on villages in the aftermath of the quake, and Singapore's foreign minister called for an immediate ceasefire to help relief efforts. Critical infrastructure - including bridges, highways, airports and railways - across the country of 55 million lie damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts while the conflict that has battered the economy, displaced over 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system rages on. Earthquake has been trending on Google for the past few days.