A Malaysian search and rescue crew – the first international team to reach Sagaing at the epicentre of Myanmar’s recent earthquake – said aftershocks and the risk of landmines had hampered the increasingly forlorn search for survivors.
Sagaing, a town of about 78,000 around 16km from the epicentre of last Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake, has been pulverised by the quake which killed over 2,700 people, with the toll expected to surge. Bridges and roads have collapsed, cutting it off from Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay. Desperate scenes of residents clawing at concrete and metal to rescue loved ones gave way on Monday to the grim retrieval of bodies, as the stench of corpses pinned under the rubble overwhelmed rescuers and volunteers hurried to cremate quake victims.
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Source: SCMP News
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