JUNTA CHIEF TO HEAD TO BANGKOK SUMMIT Quake toll surpasses 3,000

Sagaing, Myanmar The head of Myanmar’s junta is expected to travel to Bangkok on Thursday for a regional summit, as the death toll from his country’s devastating earthquake passed 3,000.

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Min Aung Hlaing will join a BIMSTEC gathering the seven littoral nations of the Bay of Bengal -- where he will raise the response to Friday's 7.7-magnitude quake that has flattened buildings across the country.

Many nations have sent aid and teams of rescue workers to Myanmar since the quake, but heavily damaged infrastructure and patchy communications -- as well as the country's rumbling civil war -- have hampered efforts.

Myanmar has been engulfed in a brutal multisided conflict since 2021, when Min Aung Hlaing's military wrested power from the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Following reports of sporadic clashes even after the recent earthquake, the junta on Wednesday joined its opponents in calling a temporary halt to hostilities to allow relief to be delivered.