Hope of finding more quake survivors rises after successful rescues

Civil war in Myanmar complicates efforts; signs of life in ruins of Bangkok skyscraper

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BANGKOK - Survivors were pulled out of rubble in Myanmar and signs of life were detected in the ruins of a skyscraper in Bangkok on March 31 as efforts intensified to find people trapped three days after a massive earthquake killed around 2,000.

Rescuers freed four people, including a pregnant woman and a girl, from collapsed buildings in Mandalay, the city in Myanmar near the epicentre of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake on March 28, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese rescue workers in red helmets carried one survivor, wrapped in a metallic thermal blanket, through heaps of shattered concrete and twisted metal at an apartment building in Mandalay, images carried by China's state broadcaster CCTV showed.

Drone footage of the city showed a huge, multi-storey building pancaked into layers of concrete, but some gilded temples were still standing.

Civil war in Myanmar, where a military junta seized power in a coup in 2021, was complicating efforts to reach those injured or made homeless by the South-east Asian nation's biggest quake in a century.

"Access to all victims is an issue... given the conflict situation. There are a lot of security issues to access some areas across the front lines in particular," Mr Arnaud de Baecque, resident representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Myanmar, told Reuters.

One rebel group said Myanmar's ruling military was still conducting air strikes on villages in the aftermath of the quake.

Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan called for an immediate ceasefire to help relief efforts.