Rescuers are desperately searching for survivors more than two days after a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar, toppling buildings as far away as the Thai capital Bangkok and sending tremors through nearby Chinese provinces.

More than 1,600 people are dead after what was the largest earthquake to hit the war-ravaged country in more than a century, authorities say. Experts fear the true death toll could take weeks to emerge.

Widespread damage has been reported after the quake triggered bridges and buildings to collapse, including in Bangkok, where authorities are trying to free dozens believed to be trapped under the rubble of an under-construction high-rise.

The epicenter was recorded in Myanmar’s central Sagaing region, near the former royal capital Mandalay, home to around 1.5 million people, as well as multiple historic temple complexes and palaces.

Meanwhile, foreign aid and international rescue teams have started arriving in Myanmar after the military issued a rare plea for help.

Friday’s quake was the deadliest natural disaster to hit the country in years and comes as Myanmar reels from a civil war that since 2021 has damaged communication networks, battered health infrastructure and left millions without adequate food and shelter.

Here’s what we know.

Massive human toll

More than 1,600 people are dead and around 3,400 injured, Myanmar’s military said on state television. Nearly 140 others remain missing.

Authorities expect that number to rise. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the final death toll could surpass 10,000 people, according to early modeling.

In Bangkok, hundreds of miles from the epicenter, at least 17 people were killed. Of these, 10 died when an under-construction building collapsed in minutes, leaving dozens trapped under the rubble. Seven fatalities were reported elsewhere in the capital, authorities said.

Search and rescue operations are ongoing in Bangkok for at least 80 people who remain missing, as families gather at the site of the collapsed high-rise for any news of their loved ones.

Around 9,500 reports of building damage have been received in Bangkok, the city’s governor said Sunday. Other than the collapsed tower, there have been few reports or evidence of catastrophic damage.

The earthquake was the most powerful to strike Myanmar in over a century, after it was struck by a 7.9-magnitude temblor in 1912 in Taunggyi, a city also in central Myanmar.

Aftershocks, the largest of which was a 6.7-magnitude tremor on Friday, have continued throughout the weekend, according to the USGS.

Widespread devastation

Testimonies and satellite images of the devastation have begun to emerge as witnesses in Myanmar recall the moments friends and loved ones were buried by rubble.

“It hit very strong and very fast,” one woman living in Mandalay recalled. Part of the wall of the house collapsed onto the woman’s grandmother who was sitting nearby, burying her legs in rubble and debris, she said.

The quake also shattered some of the city’s mosques, which were busy with worshippers attending Friday prayers, one man said.

Since the quake struck, communication has been difficult with people in Myanmar, including Mandalay – making it hard to know the true extent of the damage.

In the south, the townships of Nyaungshwe, Kalaw and Pinlaung are among the hardest hit by the earthquake, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

“Thousands of people are spending the nights on the streets or (in) open spaces due to the damage and destruction to homes or fearing further quakes,” the agency said.

In Naypyidaw, the country’s military capital and 160 miles south of Mandalay, a three-story hospital partially collapsed, trapping patients beneath the rubble, Chinese state media said. Some 40 hours after the quake, China’s rescue team rescued one person from the debris.

As of Sunday, nearly 1,700 houses, 670 monasteries, 60 schools and three bridges were reported to be damaged, and there are concerns for the structural integrity of large dams, OCHA said. It also noted damage to hospitals, major bridges, universities and historical and public buildings.

Before-and-after satellite images released by Maxar Technologies show the scope of the damage, with multiple monasteries, temples, pagodas and buildings throughout Mandalay and Sagaing having severe structural damage.

The Sagaing Bridge over the mighty Irrawaddy River, which separates Sagaing and Mandalay, was destroyed, with nearly every section of the bridge fully or partially collapsed into the water.

Foreign aid deployed

Several countries have deployed resources to assist in rescue and relief operations after military leaders, normally averse to foreign involvement, issued a rare plea for help.

A team from China was the first to reach Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon on Saturday, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said, as Beijing pledged $13.8 million in humanitarian assistance.

Russia was quick to follow China in deploying its own team of specialists, including dog teams, anesthesiologists and psychologists, the country’s Emergencies Ministry said.

The United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia will donate aid packages totaling over $20 million in humanitarian assistance.

United States President Donald Trump described the quake as “terrible” and vowed that the US would also send assistance. India, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong have also announced they would send help.

The UN announced an immediate pledge of $5 million in aid for Myanmar and said it was mobilizing teams and support for the relief effort.

However, rescue teams face a daunting task after infrastructure weakened by the civil war was further damaged by the quake. Efforts are also likely to be complicated as the quake’s impact zone includes areas that have seen intense fighting since the junta seized power in 2021 and where competing administrations – the military government and rebel groups – operate separately.

Aid groups say wrecked roads, rubble and communication blackouts are impeding relief efforts, according to the United Nations, as health authorities struggle to cope in a system also hollowed out by conflict.

Severe shortages of medical supplies – including trauma kits, blood bags, anesthetics and assistive devices – have complicated relief efforts, OCHA said Saturday.

Health workers on the ground are struggling to field streams of injured people, according to OCHA.

Why was this earthquake so destructive?

Myanmar is on an active earthquake belt, but many of the temblors usually happen in sparsely populated areas, not cities like those affected Friday.

The USGS and Germany’s GFZ center for geosciences said the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Shallower earthquakes tend to cause more damage.

Scientists say the quake occurred along the Sagaing fault, which runs north-south through Myanmar, and that it is a “strike-slip” fault, when two tectonic plates shift mostly horizontally.

Brian Baptie, seismologist with the British Geological Survey, said the rupture moved the earth five meters (16.4 feet) over about a minute in some areas.

Because most of the buildings in the area are made from “timber or unreinforced brick masonry,” he said, they are highly vulnerable to quake damage.

British police raided a Quaker meeting house in London on Thursday and arrested six women attending a meeting on climate change and the war in Gaza, according to a statement from Quakers UK.

“No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” said Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, according to the statement.

“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest,” Parker added.

Quakers, a nickname for members of the Religious Society of Friends, follow a religious tradition that originally grew from Protestant Christianity in the 17th century.

Quakers have a long history of supporting protest movements and non-violence is one of their core beliefs.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The first time he flew his cargo plane through the clouds over his hometown of Kabul, Tauheed Khan swelled with pride.

During the US-led, 20-year war against the Taliban, Afghan Air Force pilots played a key role alongside American counterparts, some carrying out strikes that inflicted heavy casualties on the hardline Islamists.

That coalition ended in August 2021, when foreign troops withdrew and Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Khan now finds himself in neighboring Pakistan with his young family, fearing that they could be killed if they return to an Afghanistan now under the grip of the very forces he fought against.

Worsening their plight, anti-migrant policies in both Washington and Islamabad mean time is running out to find a safe alternative, including a looming deadline at the end of this month.

The war, which began with the US invasion in 2001 following the September 11 attacks, devastated Afghanistan’s civilian population, which is still recovering.

The ousting of the Taliban by the US-led coalition led to profound changes, including a return of democracy and significant improvements for Afghanistan’s women. But war and instability raged across swathes of the nation, especially in rural areas.

Tens of thousands were killed. Civilian losses escalated to 5,183 dead in the first six months of 2021, as the US began to pull out from Afghanistan and depend further on the Afghan military. A five-year study published by the United Nations in 2021 showed that 785 children died from US and AAF airstrikes over that period.

As the US finally pulled out, the Afghan army and government collapsed, allowing Taliban fighters to sweep back into power. Afghans affiliated with the former government are “most at risk” from the new Taliban administration, according to a report published by Human Rights Watch.

HRW and the United Nations have documented “extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention, and torture and other ill-treatment” of Afghans who were in the security forces.

‘Pilots risk everything’

Khan’s friend, 37-year-old Khapalwaka is equally terrified. A trained aviation engineer, he worked as part of the AAF’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance program. His job involved clearing out civilian areas before they were targeted by US drone strikes.

He said he was assigned the task by his superiors, something he had often protested. “I soon became a target of the local Taliban faction,” said Khapalwaka, who had to move house every “three to four months” for safety reasons, even before Kabul fell.

Now selling wood by the roadside to feed his family, Khapalwaka – who, like Khan, was speaking under a pseudonym – said he’s concerned the Taliban could reach him in Pakistan too. “I know that they have contacts here, that they could target me here if they wanted… I just want to get out of here, so my daughters have a chance to be educated.”

The Afghan Taliban denied that former pilots were at risk if they returned.

The US embassy in Islamabad did not respond to a request to comment.

Left in limbo

Khan sat in a small room of his tiny apartment in a non-descript Islamabad building. Bedspreads shrouded windows as makeshift curtains, but slivers of sunlight poked through, making harsh blotches on the faces of his small children, who slept tucked together in frayed blankets on the floor, oblivious to the sound around them.

The youngest child was awake and constantly jumping on Khan’s lap as he spoke of the life he left behind.

In the chaos that ensued after the US withdrawal, Khan got to Pakistan in March 2022. He arrived legally and on foot, following the advice of a US pilot who had been one of his trainers.

Since then, Khan said, there has been “silence.”

In the past two months, White House policy has moved in a less predictable, more anti-migrant direction under President Donald Trump, throwing into doubt the prospects for Afghans such as Khan.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have already been caught in limbo due to other Trump administration executive orders suspending the US refugee admissions program and the suspension of foreign aid funding for flights of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders. According to #AfghanEvac, at least 2,000 Afghans who had previously been approved to resettle in the US are currently in limbo.

March 31 deadline for Afghans in Pakistan

And the days of Pakistan offering at least relative safety may be numbered.

Home to one of the world’s largest refugee populations – most of them from Afghanistan – Pakistan has not always welcomed the foreigners, subjecting them to hostile living conditions and threatening deportation over the years.

According to the UN refugee agency, more than 3 million Afghan refugees, including registered refugees and more than 800,000 undocumented people, are living in Pakistan.

Islamabad has been cracking down on Afghan refugees since October 2023. It had shown leniency towards Afghans awaiting settlement elsewhere, but that changed after an announcement this February that it would repatriate “Afghan nationals bound for 3rd country resettlement,” by March 31.

That deadline will arrive on the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, which ends the holy month of Ramadan. It is a time of celebration, feasting and gift-giving, but for Jawad Ahmed, a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot with the AAF, it feels like “all days are melting into one”.

“I was known in my hometown as someone who worked with the US military and I was a military man myself,” said Ahmed, whose name has also been changed at his request to protect his identity.

He arrived in Pakistan legally and was in limbo for two years. He said he interviewed with US immigration officers in May of 2024 and had his medical interview on January 10 at the US embassy. Since then, like many others including Khan, Ahmad has heard nothing from any US embassy official.

Ahmed spoke of seeing Pakistani police “whisk away” his Afghan neighbors, with an increase in raids over the last two months. His children are “overwhelmed with fear and terror.”

‘Death, difficulties and horrors’

But returning to Afghanistan could be even worse, according to Ahmed. “Only death, difficulties and horrors await us there” he said.

Ahmed’s family in Afghanistan have adopted new names and identities for their safety, eking out a life in a new province.

“Nobody knows about me where they are, nobody knows that they had a son, that they had a brother, in their new world it’s as if I never existed.”

He repeatedly asks for his message to be shared with President Trump and the US government.

“You trained us, we were there for you in a difficult time, we stood shoulder to shoulder with you,” said Ahmed. “We don’t have options in Pakistan, what can we do, please for the love of God get us out of here. We don’t have a life here; we are choking with fear.”

A serving US air force pilot, who asked to remain anonymous, has been assisting Afghan pilots they served alongside.

While serving soldiers have had some success helping families escape to the US, they still “fear for” their Afghan counterparts stuck in Pakistan and other countries and have “anxiety about their current situation and their future,” the pilot said.

Abandoning former partners, according to Vandiver of #AfghanEvac, sends a “chilling message to future US allies – whether in Ukraine, Taiwan, or elsewhere – that partnering with the US is a death sentence once the war ends.”

“China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are going to eat our lunch because of this.”

A spokesperson for the US embassy said it remains in close communication with Pakistan on the status of Afghan nationals seeking resettlement in America.

As Eid approaches, Tauheed Khan and his friendship group of 27 Afghan pilots and engineers stuck in Islamabad, dream of eating meat to end their fast, of access to education for their children, of new clothes, a better home to live in with proper beds and of a way out.

“We are scared we will be dragged out,” says Khan. “We are under too much pressure, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Anxious loved ones waited outside a twisted mass of metal and concrete in the heart of Thailand’s capital on Saturday as rescuers searched for dozens of missing workers and the city confronted the aftermath of a rare and powerful earthquake that set skyscrapers swaying and rattled millions of residents.

Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake struck hundreds of miles away in impoverished Myanmar, but was strong enough to send shock waves through the forest of high-rise condominiums, shopping malls and offices of central Bangkok, sending water spilling from infinity pools and buckling carriages on the city’s rail network.

In Myanmar some 700 people have been confirmed killed so far and more than 1,600 injured, according to the isolated country’s military government, with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimating the final toll there could surpass 10,000 people according to early modeling.

At least 10 people have died in Bangkok, its deputy governor said, sending shock waves of a different kind through a city that sits on no major tectonic fault.

‘I kept calling’

The ground zero of the devastation in the Thai capital is an under-construction 30-story skyscraper next to the sprawling Chatuchak weekend market popular with the millions of foreign tourists that visit the city each year.

Early Saturday the loved ones of those feared buried under the mountain of broken pillars, rubble and steel sat on plastic chairs at the edge of the excavation site, watching diggers claw through the debris.

“I kept calling, but it was unsuccessful. All I kept hearing was the continuous toot… toot… of a busy signal,” she said.

“I feel like there’s a lump in my stomach, and I have no appetite to eat. I’m worried about my mom and sister still being stuck inside since yesterday. Nowhere to be found.”

She said she had spoken to her sister on Friday morning before they left for work.

“I asked her what she would have for lunch,” she recalled.

In a city where deep inequalities are on stark display, many of Bangkok’s construction workers hail from poorer parts of Thailand, especially its less wealthy northeast, as well as from neighboring Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The collapsed structure was being built by a subsidiary of the China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group, itself a subsidiary of the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC), one of the world’s largest construction and engineering contractors, according to a now-deleted social media post by the group.

The Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited was also involved in the project, according to Chinese state media report from 2021.

In a post on its official WeChat account on April 2, 2024, China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group celebrated the completion of the building’s main structure on March 31, 2024.

When completed, the 137-meter building was to serve as the office of Thailand’s State Audit Office and other related government agencies, the company said in the post.

Broken skybridge

Elsewhere across the Southeast Asian megacity, glitzy glass-and-steel buildings home to expensive real estate swayed and groaned when the quake hit, showering dust onto the ground.

A bridge connecting two high-rise apartment buildings in an upmarket neighborhood broke during the quake, video showed.

Other videos showed the contents of rooftop infinity pools – a popular status symbol of Bangkok’s well-heeled – sloshing off the sides of towering apartment blocks onto the street below.

Bangkok has expanded at a breakneck pace, with high-rise condos and gleaming skyscrapers shooting up in recent decades.

When the tremors began, Bella Pawita Sunthornpong thought she was experiencing a moment of lightheadedness, “because I was seeing everything was swaying.”

She grabbed her phone and started running down from the 33rd floor, telling others around her to run too. As she made her way out of the building, she said, ceiling paint was falling and everything was still swaying.

“I was thinking, you know, whatever happened, I just need to keep running until I hit the ground,” Pawita Sunthornpong said.

Engineers were rushing Saturday to assess nearly 1,000 reports of “structural concerns” across the city. Authorities said buildings would be graded – green for safe, yellow for buildings with some damage which are usable with caution, and red indicating severe damage requiring closure.

Fresh misery for war-torn Myanmar

The worst damage has taken place hundreds of miles away across the border in Myanmar, a nation far less well equipped to deal with such a large disaster.

The quake struck near Myanmar’s second most populous city, Mandalay, home to historic temple complexes and palaces.

Reuters video from near Mandalay showed a multi-story building collapsing in on itself as the quake hit, sending around a dozen saffron-robed monks ducking for cover.

The city, home to around 1.5 million people, is normally popular with foreign tourists.

But a civil war has raged across the country since the military took power in 2021, ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and ending a 10-year experiment with democratic rule.

Swathes of the country lie outside the control of the junta and are run by a patchwork of ethnic rebels and militias, making compiling reliable information extremely difficult.

The epicenter was recorded in Sagaing region, which borders Mandalay and has been ravaged by the war, with the junta, pro-military militia and rebel groups battling for control and all running checkpoints, making travel by road or river extremely difficult.

Having largely shut the country off from the world during four years of civil war, Min Aung Hlaing – the leader of Myanmar’s military government – issued an “open invitation to any organizations and nations willing to come and help the people in need within our country,” adding the toll was likely to rise.

Several aid agencies said they are mobilizing ground operations.

But the military – which has ruled Myanmar for most of its history since independence from Britain in 1948 – has a long and troubled track record of struggling to respond to major natural disasters, and in the past has granted humanitarian access, only to rescind it later.

According to a high-level Ecuadorian official familiar with the planning, construction of a new naval facility in the coastal city of Manta is part of that preparation, with barracks-style housing and administration offices designed to support sustained operations and US military personnel. The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has made no secret of his desire for foreign boots on the ground as gangs unleash terror across the country – a request he is expected to reiterate this weekend. Noboa is set to meet Trump in Florida on Saturday to discuss immigration, trade and “security cooperation.”

Noboa told the BBC he wants the US, Brazil and European nations to join his war on gangs. During an interview in early March, the president claimed Ecuador is dealing with “international narco-terrorist” groups and that his country needs the “help of international forces.” In a local radio interview, he said his government was “already in talks” to receive foreign military support for provinces such as Guayas, known for high crime, but did not specify which countries were involved in the talks.

“We have a plan in place with our law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense, the armed forces, the Strategic Intelligence Center, and international assistance and support from special forces. That’s essential,” he told Guayaquil’s Radio City.

Noboa’s efforts are heavily dependent on April’s presidential runoff as he’s set off to face leftist candidate Luisa Gonzalez, who opposes the presence of any foreign force in the country.

The rapid pace of construction in Manta, the official said, reflects how soon Ecuador hopes international help might arrive.

The projects are supported by the United States, documents appear to show, and a US representative was present at the signing of the agreement, the Ecuadorian official said.

One rendering for a floating dock, dated August 2024, is labeled “Southcom Floating Dock,” an apparent reference to the US Southern Command, also known as Southcom. Another rendering, dated June 2024, has the US State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) logo and the project name of “Equipped Containers for the Ecuador’s Antinarcotics Special Unit and the DEA” and describes the project as an “international collaboration with the US Embassy.”

Plans for these projects have continued under the Trump administration. On March 26, Ecuador’s government announced several US-backed investments “paused due to geopolitical factors” are resuming in the country, with hundreds of thousands of dollars earmarked for construction of a pier and DEA-linked base.

There is precedent; the last time US troops operated here was from 1999 to 2009, at the now-defunct Manta Air Base. Back then, they ran surveillance flights targeting drug routes in the eastern Pacific.

Noboa has also publicly asked the Trump administration to designate Ecuadorian armed groups as terror organizations, as it has already done for several organized crime groups in the region. Such a designation could potentially empower the US government to use military force abroad in combatting the groups.

From ‘island of peace’ to a country on edge

Ecuador now has the highest homicide rate in Latin America, according to InSight Crime – recording nearly twice as many killings as Mexico. The surge is fueled by drug trafficking routes, turf wars, and alliances between local gangs and foreign cartels.

Despite the sweeping operations, many officials admit the violence feels more like it’s being managed than curtailed. Still, dozens of arrests were made.

“Cartels, gangs and other transnational criminal organizations in our part of the world are engaging in a wide array of illicit activity, from narcotics trafficking to money laundering, smuggling of illegal immigrants and human trafficking, which endanger the health, welfare and safety of everyday Americans,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during her testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday.

Ecuador’s location – flanked by the world’s top cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia – and its deep-water ports make it a key transit point for narcotics. But its vulnerability goes beyond geography.

The dollarized economy and historically loose visa policies make it easy for criminal networks to move money and people. And corruption, experts say, greases the wheels.

“It’s widespread and far-reaching,” said James Bargent of InSight Crime. “Corruption is rampant from low-level police to the upper echelons of political power, and this facilitates trafficking and provides protection to the criminal groups involved.”

In Durán, one of the country’s most violent cities, Police Chief Roberto Santamaria acknowledged corruption among police. He said they sometimes employ random polygraph testing and check bank accounts for unusual activity to try to root out corrupt officers.

Seeking global backing

Noboa has framed his crackdown as both a domestic fight and a global plea for help. Ahead of the runoff election set for April 13, he has positioned himself as a hardliner on security. In January, he and his wife were seated front and center at Trump’s inauguration, applauding as the president vowed to fight cartels and restore “law and order.”

Unlike Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has firmly rejected foreign troops’ involvement against cartels in her country, Noboa is actively seeking it. His face-to-face meeting with Trump this weekend is expected to be his most direct appeal yet for US backing.

Before leaving for Florida, Noboa also addressed Ecuador’s improving ties with the US on Friday. “We’re one of the few countries where cooperation programs are being resumed,” Noboa said to Radio Centro. “We are working on security, on providing jobs so that people don’t leave. And the US has honored that relationship.”

Ecuador’s efforts aren’t limited to government partnerships. This month, Noboa announced a “strategic alliance” with Erik Prince, the founder of the private military firm formerly known as Blackwater.

The partnership – which Noboa described as part of his plan to fight narcoterrorism and illegal fishing – was met with sharp criticism inside Ecuador, including from a former Army commander who warned of turning to a “mercenary army.” Still, it signals how far Noboa is willing to go to bring in outside support.

“They’re helping with training in urban warfare … and bringing new technology,” Noboa said Friday, speaking on Prince’s involvement. “They’ve operated in a dozen countries – including the US.”

For Noboa, foreign support isn’t a distant hope – it’s a strategy already in motion. Ecuador is expanding military infrastructure, clearing political hurdles, and making its case to the region, to its citizens, and now, directly to the United States.

Whether that help arrives – or arrives soon – remains to be seen.

A powerful, deadly earthquake struck at the heart of civil war-ravaged Myanmar on Friday, piling fresh misery on an impoverished nation that was cut off from much of the world even before this natural disaster struck.

The timing could hardly be worse. The Southeast Asian country is reeling from a raging civil war between a military junta that seized power in 2021, and pro-democracy fighters and ethnic rebel groups battling to overthrow it.

The war – now in its fifth year – has ravaged communications and transport in Myanmar, making it particularly difficult to get a clear picture of the damage.

So far authorities say more than 1,000 people have died. But experts fear the real toll will be far higher and could take weeks to emerge.

Here’s what we know so far.

A historic city hit hardest

On Saturday fragments emerged showing the destruction wrought by the quake from former royal capital Mandalay, home to around 1.5 million people and the city closest to its epicenter.

And they spoke of desperately rushing injured loved ones to medical care – or the agonizing wait for news of friends still missing or trapped under the rubble.

“It hit very strong and very fast,” she said of the earthquake. She recalled she was boiling water to make milk for her baby when the 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck not far from her home to the east of the city.

Part of the wall of the house collapsed onto the woman’s grandmother who was sitting nearby, burying her legs in rubble and debris, she said.

“The door couldn’t open as a fence had collapsed onto it. I shouted out for help and my husband came in from the street. He jumped on the door and managed to open it.”

“Until now, we have not been able to recover their dead bodies from rubble,” he said.

The quake also shattered some of the city’s mosques which were busy with worshippers attending Friday prayers, one man said.

“When the buildings collapsed, many Muslims got trapped inside, causing casualties and deaths… In one mosque, there are more than a hundred injured.”

Across the mighty Irrawaddy river that runs past Mandalay, there is also destruction in Sagaing region, a more rural area, where many live in more flimsy – but more earthquake survivable – wooden and thatched houses.

Nang Aye Yin, 34, heard news that the nunnery where a relative of his was studying had collapsed.

“Luckily no one died, but two were badly wounded. One of my nieces aged 11 lost three toes and another nun had her head broken as well as one of her legs.”

Hospitals in both Sagaing and Mandalay turned them away as they were already at full capacity, he said.

A rare call for outside help

Myanmar’s military junta seized power in a 2021 coup after a brief 10-year experiment with democracy. Before that, Myanmar’s generals ruled for decades. And generally, whenever disaster struck, they would eschew foreign help and play down the impact.

This time it’s different.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing took the unusual step of quickly asking for foreign aid. He visited the city of Mandalay on Saturday to inspect the damage, state media reported, as well as the capital Naypyidaw which was also hit hard.

On Saturday several neighboring countries began sending rescue teams and aid.

A team from China – historically one of the junta’s closest partners – were the first to arrive, touching down in Myanmar’s commercial hub Yangon bringing relief supplies, Chinese state media said.

Singapore, Malaysia, India and Russia also announced they would send help.

But for those in quake-stricken Mandalay, around 380 miles away and with transportation uncertain, the wait driving them mad.

“My head is going to explode while waiting for calls for friends who cannot be found yet,” the former lawyer said.