Myanmar declared a week of national mourning on Monday about the devastating earthquake in the country, when the death toll passed 2,000 and hopes faded to find more survivors in the rubble of ruins.
The national flags will fly at half -mast until April 6 “with sympathy for the loss of lives and damage” of the mass earthquake on Friday, said the ruling board in a statement.
The Board also announced a minute of silence on Tuesday, to begin at 12:51 pm (11:21 PM PKT), the precise time reached by earthquake 7.7-Magnitude.
People must stop where they must pay tribute to the victims, the Board said, while the media should stop the transmission and show symbols of mourning, and prayers will be offered in temples and pagodas.
The announcement occurred when the tempo and urgency of rescue efforts ended in Mandalay, one of the most affected cities and the largest seconds in the country, with more than 1.7 million inhabitants.
“The situation is so serious that it is difficult to express what is happening,” said Licing Myint Hussein, chief administrator of the North Mandalay Mosque.
People prepared to camp in the streets through Mandalay for a fourth successive night, either unable to return to ruined or nervous houses for the repeated replicas that shook the city during the weekend.
Some have tents, but many, including young children, have been lying in the blankets in the middle of the roads, trying to stay as far as possible from buildings for fear of masonry.
The Board said Monday that 2,056 have now been confirmed, with more than 3,900 people injured and that 270 are still missing, but the toll is expected to increase significantly.
Three Chinese citizens are among the dead, said the state media of China, along with two French, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris.
At least 19 deaths have been confirmed hundreds of kilometers away in the capital of Thailand, Bangkok, where the strength of the earthquake caused a 30 -story tower block to collapse.
Outdoor hospital
The general hospital of 1,000 Mandalay beds has been evacuated, and hundreds of patients are treated outside.
Patients lay on the stretchers in the hospital parking, many with only a thin canvas paired to protect them from the tropical fierce sun.
Family members did everything possible to comfort them, take hand or waving bamboo fans about them.
“We are trying to do what we can here. We are doing our best,” said a doctor, who asked to remain in anonymity.
The sticky heat has exhausted rescue workers and accelerated body decomposition, which could complicate identification.
But the traffic began to return to the streets of Mandalay on Monday, and the restaurants and street vendors resumed the work.
Hundreds of Muslims gathered outside a mosque destroyed in the city for the first prayer of Eid al-Fitr, the party that follows the Islamic month on the fasts of Ramadan.
Humanitarian crisis
The challenges facing the country of Southeast Asia of more than 50 million people were immense even before the earthquake.
Myanmar has been devastated for four years of civil war caused by a military coup in 2021, with its shattered economy and seriously damaged medical care and infrastructure.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the earthquake was a high -level emergency, since it urgently sought $ 8 million to save lives, while the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Companies has launched an appeal for more than $ 100 million.
International help and rescue teams have arrived after the Chief of the Board MIN AUNG HLAING made an exceptionally rare appeal for foreign assistance.
In the past, Myanmar’s rulers have rejected foreign assistance, even after great natural disasters.
The Board spokesman, Zaw Min Tun, thanked China’s key allies for their help, as well as India, and said the authorities were doing everything possible.
“We are trying and giving treatment to injured people and looking for the missing ones,” he told reporters.
But reports have emerged from the military who carry out air attacks in armed groups opposed to their government, even when Myanmar deal with the sequelae of the earthquake.
An ethnic minority group told him AFP On Sunday that seven of his combatants were killed in an air attack shortly after the earthquake, and there were reports of more air attacks on Monday.
The furious civil war of Myanmar, facing the military against a complex range of combatants against the container and armed groups of ethnic minorities, has displaced around 3.5 million people.
In Bangkok, Diggers continued to clear the vast bar of debris on the collapsed building site.
The authorities say they have not given the hope of finding more survivors in the remains, where 12 deaths have been confirmed and at least 75 people are not yet counted.
