Myanmar quake death toll tops 2,000 as help comes slowly for war-torn city

BANGKOK – Three days after Myanmar’s worst earthquake in more than a century ravaged the remote, war-torn city of Sagaing, razing monasteries and apartment buildings, help was still just starting to trickle in.

The city’s 300,000 residents had been left to largely fend for themselves after the 7.7 magnitude quake struck, damaging roads and prompting authorities to close a bridge over safety concerns. The area was already deeply isolated, cut off from the internet by Myanmar’s military, which has been fighting rebels in a civil war.

By late Monday, some international aid groups began arriving in Sagaing. But local volunteers seeking to help with search-and-rescue efforts said they were being blocked by the military.

The military government said Monday that the toll from the earthquake, which ripped through large swaths of Myanmar, including Sagaing, and the cities of Mandalay and Naypyitaw, had surged to 2,056, up from around 1,700 on Saturday. An additional 3,900 were injured. Preliminary modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests the number of deaths could be more than 10,000.

Search-and-rescue teams have flocked to Mandalay and Naypyitaw, the home of the country’s generals. But many people in Myanmar have taken to social media to plead with foreign governments to redirect aid into Sagaing, which was close to the quake’s epicenter and where residents say that more than 80% of the town has been destroyed.

In Sagaing on Monday, soldiers kept watch at checkpoints but were not seen helping to search for survivors. With no space left in the main hospital in the city, people wrapped their dead in white cloth and laid them on the concrete outside. Hundreds of residents were stranded on the streets, sleeping under plastic tarps with no power, and food and water that is quickly running out.

The disaster was so bad that it prompted the junta to make a rare call for international aid. But it is clear that such aid will only be allowed in on the junta’s terms.

Then on Monday, a 50-member trauma response team from Malaysia entered Sagaing, the first foreign rescue team to do so, according to local media.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.