Myanmar quake death toll at 3,354, junta leader returns from summit

BANGKOK, Thailand – The death toll from Myanmar’s devastating earthquake climbed to 3,354, with 4,850 injured and 220 missing, state media said on Saturday, April 5, as the visiting United Nations aid chief praised humanitarian and community groups for leading the aid response.

The leader of the military government, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, was back in the capital Naypyitaw after a rare foreign trip to attend a summit in Bangkok of South and Southeast Asian nations, where he also met separately with the leaders of Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and India.

Min Aung Hlaing reaffirmed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the junta’s plans to hold “free and fair” elections in December, Myanmar state media said.

Modi called for a post-quake ceasefire in Myanmar’s civil war to be made permanent, and said the elections needed to be “inclusive and credible,” an Indian foreign affairs spokesperson said on Friday, April 4.

Critics have derided the planned election as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies.

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, a situation exacerbated by the March 28 quake.

The civil war that followed the coup has displaced more than 3 million people, with widespread food insecurity and more than a third of the population in need of humanitarian assistance, the UN says.

United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher spent Friday night in Myanmar’s second-biggest city Mandalay, near the epicenter of the quake, posting on X that humanitarian and community groups had led the response to the quake with “courage, skill and determination.”

“Many themselves lost everything, and yet kept heading out to support survivors,” he said.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday the junta was restricting aid supplies to quake-hit areas where communities did not back its rule. The UN office said it was investigating 53 reported attacks by the junta against opponents, including airstrikes, of which 16 were after the ceasefire was declared on Wednesday.

A junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment. – Rappler.com