[Source: 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.

Speaking at the White House later on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had spoken with officials in Myanmar and that his administration would be providing some form of assistance.

“We’re going to be helping,” he told reporters.

Despite the administration’s push to shut the U.S. Agency for International Development and cut nearly all remaining jobs, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said USAID disaster experts were ready to help, including with items such as food and potable water.

“USAID has maintained a team of disaster experts with the capacity to respond if disaster strikes,” she told a press briefing. “We are ready to move now. There has been no impact on our ability to perform those duties, those requests for aid, if and when they come in.”

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 Taung 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 told Reuters it had retrieved at least 60 bodies from monasteries and buildings in Pyinmana, near the 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.

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