Humanitarian crisis

The challenges facing the Southeast Asian country of more than 50 million people were immense even before the earthquake.

Myanmar has been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021, with its economy shattered and healthcare and infrastructure badly damaged.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the quake a top-level emergency as it urgently sought $8 million to save lives and prevent disease outbreaks over the next 30 days.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an appeal for more than $100 million to help victims.

International aid and rescue teams have been arriving after junta chief Min Aung Hlaing made an exceptionally rare appeal for foreign assistance.

In the past, isolated Myanmar's ruling generals have shunned foreign assistance, even after major natural disasters.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun thanked key allies China and Russia for their help, as well as India, and said the authorities were doing their best.

"We are trying and giving treatment to injured people and searching for missing ones," he told journalists.

But reports have emerged of the military carrying out air strikes on armed groups opposed to its rule, even as Myanmar grapples with the quake's aftermath.

One ethnic minority armed group told AFP on Sunday that seven of its fighters were killed in an aerial attack soon after the quake, and there were reports of more air strikes on Monday.

Myanmar's raging civil war, pitting the military against a complex array of anti-coup fighters and ethnic minority armed groups, has displaced around 3.5 million people.

In Bangkok, diggers continued to clear the vast pile of rubble at the site of the collapsed building.

Officials say they have not given up hope of finding more survivors in the wreckage, where 12 deaths have been confirmed and at least 75 people are still unaccounted for.

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