Res­cue work­ers saved a 63-year-old woman from the rub­ble of a build­ing in Myan­mar’s cap­i­tal on Tues­day, but hope was fad­ing of find­ing many more sur­vivors of the vi­o­lent earth­quake that killed more than 2,700 peo­ple, com­pound­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis caused by a civ­il war.

The fire de­part­ment in Naypy­itaw said the woman was suc­cess­ful­ly pulled from the rub­ble 91 hours af­ter be­ing buried when the build­ing col­lapsed in the 7.7 mag­ni­tude earth­quake that hit mid­day Fri­day. Ex­perts say the like­li­hood of find­ing sur­vivors drops dra­mat­i­cal­ly af­ter 72 hours.

Death toll num­bers fore­cast to in­crease

The head of Myan­mar’s mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment, Se­nior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, told a fo­rum in Naypy­itaw, that 2,719 peo­ple have now been found dead, with 4,521 oth­ers in­jured and 441 miss­ing, Myan­mar’s West­ern News on­line por­tal re­port­ed.

Those fig­ures are wide­ly ex­pect­ed to rise, but the earth­quake hit a wide swath of the coun­try, leav­ing many ar­eas with­out pow­er, tele­phone or cell con­nec­tions and dam­ag­ing roads and bridges, leav­ing the full ex­tent of the dev­as­ta­tion hard to as­sess.

Most of the re­ports so far have come from Man­dalay, Myan­mar’s sec­ond-largest city, which was near the epi­cen­ter of the earth­quake, and Naypy­itaw.

“The needs are mas­sive, and they are ris­ing by the hour,” said Ju­lia Rees, UNICEF’s deputy rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Myan­mar.

“The win­dow for life­sav­ing re­sponse is clos­ing. Across the af­fect­ed ar­eas, fam­i­lies are fac­ing acute short­ages of clean wa­ter, food, and med­ical sup­plies.”

Myan­mar’s fire de­part­ment said that 403 peo­ple have been res­cued in Man­dalay and 259 bod­ies have been found so far. In one in­ci­dent alone, 50 Bud­dhist monks who were tak­ing a re­li­gious ex­am in a monastery were killed when the build­ing col­lapsed and 150 more are thought to be buried in the rub­ble.

Struc­tur­al dam­age is ex­ten­sive

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said that more than 10,000 build­ings over­all are known to have col­lapsed or been se­vere­ly dam­aged in cen­tral and north­west Myan­mar.

The earth­quake al­so rocked neigh­bour­ing Thai­land, caus­ing a high-rise build­ing un­der con­struc­tion to col­lapse and bury­ing many work­ers.

Two bod­ies were pulled from the rub­ble on Mon­day and an­oth­er was re­cov­ered Tues­day, but dozens were still miss­ing. Over­all, there were 21 peo­ple killed and 34 in­jured in Bangkok, pri­mar­i­ly at the con­struc­tion site.

In Myan­mar, search and res­cue ef­forts across the af­fect­ed area paused briefly at mid­day on Tues­day as peo­ple stood for a minute in silent trib­ute to the dead.

Re­lief ef­forts mov­ing at a slug­gish pace

For­eign aid work­ers have been ar­riv­ing slow­ly to help in the res­cue ef­forts, but progress was still slow with a lack of heavy ma­chin­ery in many places.

In one site in Naypy­itaw on Tues­day, work­ers formed a hu­man chain, pass­ing chunks of brick and con­crete out hand-by-hand from the ru­ins of a col­lapsed build­ing.

The Myan­mar mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial Glob­al New Light of Myan­mar re­port­ed Tues­day that a team of Chi­nese res­cuers saved four peo­ple the day be­fore from the ru­ins of the Sky Vil­la, a large apart­ment com­plex that col­lapsed dur­ing the quake. They in­clud­ed a 5-year-old and a preg­nant woman who had been trapped for more than 60 hours.

The same pub­li­ca­tion al­so re­port­ed two teenagers were able to crawl out of the rub­ble of the same build­ing to where res­cue crews were work­ing, us­ing their cell­phone flash­lights to help guide them. The res­cue work­ers were then able to use de­tails from what they told them to lo­cate their grand­moth­er and sib­ling.

In­ter­na­tion­al res­cue teams from sev­er­al coun­tries are on the scene, in­clud­ing from Rus­sia, Chi­na, In­dia, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and sev­er­al South­east Asian coun­tries. The U.S. Em­bassy said an Amer­i­can team had been sent but hadn’t yet ar­rived.

Aid pledges pour­ing in as of­fi­cials warn of dis­ease out­break risk

Mean­time, mul­ti­ple coun­tries have pledged mil­lions in aid to as­sist Myan­mar and hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid or­ga­ni­za­tions with the mon­u­men­tal task ahead.

Even be­fore the earth­quake, more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple had been dis­placed from their homes by Myan­mar’s bru­tal civ­il war, and near­ly 20 mil­lion were in need, ac­cord­ing to the U.N.

Many were al­ready lack­ing in ba­sic med­ical care and stan­dard vac­ci­na­tions, and the de­struc­tion of wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion in­fra­struc­ture by the earth­quake rais­es the risk of dis­ease out­breaks, warned the U.N.'s Of­fice for the Co­or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs.

“The dis­place­ment of thou­sands in­to over­crowd­ed shel­ters, cou­pled with the de­struc­tion of wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion in­fra­struc­ture, has sig­nif­i­cant­ly height­ened the risk of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­ease out­breaks,” OCHA said in its lat­est re­port.

“Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions, skin dis­eases, vec­tor-borne ill­ness­es such as dengue fever, and vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases like measles is es­ca­lat­ing,” it added.

The on­set of mon­soon sea­son al­so a wor­ry

Shel­ter is al­so a ma­jor prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly with the mon­soon sea­son loom­ing.

Since the earth­quake, many peo­ple have been sleep­ing out­side, ei­ther be­cause homes were de­stroyed or out of fear of af­ter­shocks.

Civ­il war com­pli­cates dis­as­ter re­lief

Myan­mar’s mil­i­tary seized pow­er in 2021 from the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Aung San Suu Kyi, spark­ing what has turned in­to sig­nif­i­cant armed re­sis­tance and a bru­tal civ­il war.

Gov­ern­ment forces have lost con­trol of much of Myan­mar, and many places were dan­ger­ous or im­pos­si­ble for aid groups to reach even be­fore the quake.

Mil­i­tary at­tacks and those from some an­ti-mil­i­tary groups have not stopped in the af­ter­math of the earth­quake, though the shad­ow op­po­si­tion Na­tion­al Uni­ty Gov­ern­ment has called a uni­lat­er­al cease­fire for its forces.

The NUG, es­tab­lished by elect­ed law­mak­ers who were oust­ed in 2021, called for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid is de­liv­ered di­rect­ly to the earth­quake vic­tims, urg­ing “vig­i­lance against any at­tempts by the mil­i­tary jun­ta to di­vert or ob­struct hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance.”

“We are in a race against time to save lives,” the NUG said in a state­ment.

“Any ob­struc­tion to these ef­forts will have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences, not on­ly due to the im­pact of the earth­quake but al­so be­cause of the jun­ta’s con­tin­ued bru­tal­i­ty, which ac­tive­ly hin­ders the de­liv­ery of life­sav­ing as­sis­tance.”

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether the mil­i­tary has been im­ped­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. In the past, it ini­tial­ly re­fused to al­low in for­eign res­cue teams or many emer­gency sup­plies af­ter Cy­clone Nar­gis in 2008, which re­sult­ed in well more than 100,000 deaths. Even once it did al­low for­eign as­sis­tance, it was with se­vere re­stric­tions.

In this case, how­ev­er, Min Aung Hlaing, point­ed­ly said on the day of the earth­quake that the coun­try would ac­cept out­side help.

Tom An­drews, a mon­i­tor on rights in Myan­mar com­mis­sioned by the U.N.-backed Hu­man Rights Coun­cil, said on X that to fa­cil­i­tate aid, mil­i­tary at­tacks must stop.

“The fo­cus in Myan­mar must be on sav­ing lives, not tak­ing them,” he said.

Grant Peck and Jin­ta­mas Sak­sorn­chai in Bangkok, and Jamey Keat­en in Gene­va, con­tributed to this sto­ry.

BANGKOK (AP) —