Opponents of Myanmar’s military government have urged international agencies to send aid directly into earthquake-stricken areas under rebel control as the country’s junta continues to launch attacks on resistance forces three days after the disaster.
Armed resistance forces and pro-democracy agencies said the junta could not be trusted to apportion aid fairly and that supplies must be directed to them.
“Failure to do so will deepen the already dire humanitarian crisis and guarantee further abuses by an illegal body notorious for its active destruction of human lives,” a group of 365 NGOs said in a statement. “The people of Myanmar deserve aid that alleviates suffering — not aid weaponised against them.”
• What happened in Myanmar? A visual guide to the earthquake
Burmese media reported on Monday morning that fighter jets dropped four bombs on rebel forces in Salin, a town affected by the earthquake. On Saturday attack helicopters strafed Innmathi Pyu, a village 65 miles from the epicentre.
According to a tally by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a news website, 12 people have been killed in 20 attacks by the junta since the earthquake on Friday afternoon.
The 7.7-magnitude quake caused the most damage in the cities of Sagaing and Mandalay, which are under the control of the military government. But disparate resistance groups hold sway in the countryside and fear that they will be deprived of aid and materials for reconstruction by the junta as it seeks to make gains in the civil war that has been running since 2021.
Shwe Win Aung, a member of an emergency response team under the aegis of one of the People Defence Forces, local militias fighting the government in the name of the exiled National Unity Government (NUG), said: “The military [junta] is trying to use the earthquake disaster as an excuse to show political legitimacy.”
Before and after: devastation in Myanmar
He added: “International agencies are very welcome to help with the earthquake. But that help will not reach … our revolutionary areas — it will not reach them at all. We also need to think carefully about how to effectively reach the areas controlled by the [junta].”
The government’s official death toll rose on Monday to just over 2,000, while the NUG’s toll reached 2,418. The final figure seems likely to be several times that.
A report by the NUG listed the many problems faced by rebel-controlled areas, with a lack of electricity, fuel shortages, internet and phone blackouts and broken bridges and roads adding to shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
It warned that further suffering would be caused by storms gathering in the Bay of Bengal. Many people whose homes are intact are afraid to return to them because of the 34 aftershocks that have been registered since the original earthquake.
The NUG said: “[The] likelihood of heavy rain in many parts of the country … could further complicate the insufficiency of temporary shelters for those whose houses are severely damaged by the recent earthquake.”
International aid providers are arriving in the devastated zone. Many of them have memories of the aftermath of the deadly Cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the junta then blocked foreign aid workers from the country for several weeks.
In practice, though, international organisations have little choice but to work with the military government, which controls the biggest towns, ports and roads.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said: “The UN calls for unimpeded humanitarian access for humanitarian convoys, medical personnel and assessment teams to all affected regions, regardless of location or control.”
There is concern that the political difficulties of dealing with the regime will discourage governments from funding the relief effort, particularly when the Trump administration is cutting aid and there are many competing causes, from Gaza to Ukraine. The junta’s leaders have called for international aid.
Richard Horsey, an adviser at the International Crisis Group, said: “Is that in good faith? We’ll only know by testing it. Are we going to not mount a major international relief operation because of theoretical worries that they might not allow it to move ahead? The only way you test that is by doing it, and by calling them out if they act badly, and by negotiating as well.”
Marcoluigi Corsi, the OCHA head in Myanmar, said: “We have a significant presence in Mandalay and surrounding areas, and we are doing everything we can to reach people in need despite serious logistical challenges. But much more will be required in the days and weeks ahead. The people of Myanmar need the steadfast support of the entire international community — now more than ever.”
Efforts are continuing to rescue people trapped in collapsed buildings in Myanmar and from beneath a collapsed half-built skyscraper in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A Chinese search and rescue team reported saving five people in Mandalay. Three Chinese nationals are confirmed to have died in the disaster, the first confirmed foreign casualties.
