Powerful earthquake kills more than 140 in Myanmar, death toll likely to rise

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake killed more than 140 people in Myanmar on Friday, authorities said, toppling buildings and wrecking infrastructure across a wide area, including a skyscraper under construction in neighbouring Thailand.

Much of the devastation was in Myanmar's second largest city, Mandalay, which lies close to the epicentre of the 7.7 magnitude quake that struck at lunchtime and was followed by a powerful aftershock and several more moderate ones.

A rescue worker from Amarapura, an ancient city and now a township of Mandalay, said the bodies of 30 people had been recovered from collapsed multi-story apartment blocks.

"I have never experienced anything like this before - our town looks like a collapsed city," he said, estimating that about a fifth of the buildings had been destroyed.

"We received calls for help from people from the inside, but we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working".

General Min Aung Hlaing, leader of Myanmar's military junta, said there would be more deaths and casualties and invited "any country" to provide help and donations.

In the Thai capital Bangkok, an official said at least nine people had been killed. Rescuers were searching through the rubble of the tower block that collapsed.

Mandalay, with a population of about 1.5 million, is Myanmar's ancient royal capital and the centre of its Buddhist heartland. Rescue workers were trying to reach dozens of monks trapped under rubble in the Phaya Taug Monastery, said the emergency worker in Amarapura. Buildings, bridges and roads were wrecked, residents and local media said.

State-run MRTV said at least 144 people had been killed in Myanmar and 732 injured.

The junta is locked in a struggle to put down insurgents fighting its rule, a situation that is likely to complicate the rescue and relief operation.

"We all ran out of the house as everything started shaking," a Mandalay resident told Reuters. "I witnessed a five-storey building collapse in front of my eyes. Everyone in my town is out on the road and no one dares to go back inside."    

A rescue worker from the Moe Saydanar charity group told Reuters it had retrieved at least 60 bodies from monasteries and buildings in Pyinmanar, near Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw, and more people were trapped.

In the purpose-built capital itself, a 1,000-bed hospital sustained damage and roads were left with huge fissures, state media reported.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the United Nations was mobilising in Southeast Asia to help those in need.

Zin Mar Aung, the diplomatic spokesperson for the opposition National Unity Government, said fighters from the anti-junta militias known as the People's Defence Forces would provide humanitarian help.

A U.S. government analysis based on the strength and depth of the quake estimated there could be thousands of deaths and severe economic loss, with the Sagaing and Meiktila regions worst hit.

State media said the quake caused the collapse of buildings in five cities and towns, as well as a railway bridge and a road bridge on the Yangon-Mandalay Expressway. Images showed the destroyed Ava Bridge over the Irrawaddy River, its arches leaning into the water.

A Mandalay resident said destruction stretched across the whole city, and one neighbourhood, Sein Pan, was on fire.

Roads were damaged, phone lines disrupted and there was no electricity, said the resident, who declined to be named.

At least three people died after a mosque in Taungoo partially collapsed, two witnesses said.

"We were saying prayers when the shaking started... Three died on the spot," one said.

Local media reported a hotel in Aung Ban, in Shan state, crumbled into rubble, with the Democratic Voice of Burma reporting two people had died and 20 were trapped.

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Amnesty International said the earthquake could not have come at a worse time for Myanmar, given the number of displaced people, the existing need for relief aid, and cuts to U.S. aid by President Donald Trump's administration.

Restricted media access meant a clear picture of the extent of damage and loss might not emerge for some time, the group's Myanmar researcher, Joe Freeman, said.

Since overthrowing the elected civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the military has struggled to run Myanmar, leaving the economy and basic services including healthcare in tatters.

An armed opposition, comprising established ethnic armies and new resistance groups formed since the coup, has seized swathes of territory and driven the junta out of border areas, increasingly hemming it into the central lowlands.

The fighting has displaced more than three million people in Myanmar, with widespread food insecurity and over a third of the population in need of humanitarian assistance, the U.N. says.

Myanmar has also been hit by natural disasters in recent years, and the internationally isolated junta has struggled to respond adequately. It lies on the boundary of two tectonic plates and is among the world's most seismically active countries.

Nyi Nyi Kyaw, a Myanmar academic at the University of Bristol, said Myanmar was "wholly unable to deal with the shock and its aftermath" due to the breakdown in civil society.

In Bangkok, people ran onto the streets in panic, among them hotel guests in bathrobes and swimming costumes, as water cascaded down from an elevated pool at a luxury hotel.

Of the confirmed casualties in the Thai capital, eight died in the building collapse and a ninth died in another location, Bangkok Deputy Governor Tavida Kamolvej said. The rescue operation at the building site said over 100 people were missing.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand suspended all trading activities for the Friday afternoon session.

(Reporting by Bangkok Bureau, Shoon Naing, Wa Lone, Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, John Mair, Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Frances Kerry and Timothy Heritage)