The powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.7 that struck Myanmar may have caused more than 10,000 deaths, according to US officials quoted by CNN: an estimate in line with that of the experts.
At the moment the toll is over 1,500 dead in the Southeast Asian country and another 10 in neighboring Thailand. The number of missing is unknown. Over 6000 injured. The military junta of Myanmar has launched an urgent appeal to the international community to intervene with humanitarian aid.
According to what was found by the US geoseismic institute, USGS, in the last 24 hours in Myanmar there have been at least ten to eleven minor earthquakes, with magnitudes between 4.1 and 4.5.
The tremors occurred in various areas of the country - hit yesterday by a catastrophic earthquake of 7.7 followed by one of 6.4 -, but with a greater concentration in the central area, where the Sagaing fault runs, which also includes the capital Naypyidaw.It was broad daylight, just before 1:00 p.m., when the earth shook for the first time. The roar, the dust, the screams were followed only a few minutes later by a second powerful earthquake. The tremors of magnitude 7.7 and 6.4 struck central Myanmar, with their epicenter 16 km northwest of the city of Saigang, along the homonymous fault that crosses the country from north to south, and at a depth of only 10 km.
And they spread for thousands of kilometers, reaching neighboring Thailand, China, up to Laos and Vietnam. The toll, completely provisional, speaks of almost 150 deaths in Myanmar and at least 9 victims in Bangkok, where a 30-story skyscraper still under construction collapsed, burying dozens of workers.
There are also hundreds of injured and an incalculable number of missing under the rubble or, in the best of cases, unreachable due to the interruption of communications: it is feared that as the hours pass the death toll could reach thousands.
The idea of ??the immense catastrophe was given by the unusual appeal for international aid launched by the Burmese military junta, isolated since the 2021 coup. The prime minister and head of the junta, Min Aung Hlaing, invited "any country, any organization" to come to the rescue, assuring that he had "opened all avenues for foreign aid".
And he received the immediate availability of India, the European Union and Donald Trump's United States, while the WHO announced that it had activated its emergency management system. The Pope said he was "saddened by the loss of life".
"In some areas, buildings have collapsed," said Min Aung Hlaing, visiting a hospital in the capital Naypyidaw where the death toll is currently 96. The injured arrived "en masse" but the entrance to the emergency room collapsed and the entire building suffered heavy damage, forcing medical staff to take care of hundreds of people outside. "I have never seen anything like this, we are trying to manage the situation," a doctor told AFP.
This is in fact the strongest tremor in the country since 1946 and, according to the INGV, it was 300 times more powerful than the one that devastated Amatrice in 2016. The junta has therefore declared a state of emergency in six of the country's seven regions (Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway, in the northeast of the north-east of Shan State, Naypyidaw and Bago).
Even in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city and a few kilometers from the epicenter, several buildings collapsed buildings, including a hospital and a hotel, but "the tragedy is that aid is scarce or completely absent" due to the ongoing civil war, a local Catholic source told Fides. The road surface is torn up everywhere, the main highway, near Mandalay, is interrupted, some bridges have collapsed, like the one in Sagaing. In Taungoo, south of Naypyidaw, about twenty children were trapped under the rubble of a school
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