The death toll from Myanmar’s devastating earthquake climbed to 3,354, with 4,850 injured and 220 missing, state media said on Saturday, as the visiting United Nations aid chief praised humanitarian and community groups for leading the aid response.
The leader of the military government, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, was back in the capital Naypyitaw after a rare foreign trip to attend a summit in Bangkok of South and Southeast Asian nations, where he also met separately with the leaders of Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and India.
Min Aung Hlaing reaffirmed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the junta’s plans to hold “free and fair” elections in December, Myanmar state media said.
Modi called for a post-quake ceasefire in Myanmar’s civil war to be made permanent, and said the elections needed to be “inclusive and credible”, an Indian foreign affairs spokesperson said on Friday.
Critics have derided the planned election as a sham to keep the generals in power through proxies.
Since overthrowing the elected civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the military has struggled to run Myanmar, leaving the economy and basic services, including healthcare, in tatters, a situation exacerbated by the March 28 quake.
The civil war that followed the coup has displaced more than three million people, with widespread food insecurity and more than a third of the population in need of humanitarian assistance, the UN says.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher spent Friday night in Myanmar’s second-biggest city Mandalay, near the epicentre of the quake, posting on X that humanitarian and community groups had led the response to the quake with “courage, skill and determination”.
“Many themselves lost everything, and yet kept heading out to support survivors,” he said.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday the junta was restricting aid supplies to quake-hit areas where communities did not back its rule.
The UN office said it was investigating 53 reported attacks by the junta against opponents, including airstrikes, of which 16 were after the ceasefire was declared on Wednesday.
A junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
USAID team fired while in Myanmar earthquake zone
Meanwhile, three US aid workers were laid off while in Myanmar helping the rescue and recovery from the country’s massive earthquake, a former senior staffer said, as the Trump administration’s dismantling of foreign aid affects its disaster response.
After travelling to the Southeast Asian nation, the three officials were told late this week they would be let go, Marcia Wong, a former official at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told Reuters.
“This team is working incredibly hard, focused on getting humanitarian aid to those in need. To get news of your imminent termination — how can that not be demoralising?” said Wong, former deputy administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which oversees Washington’s disease response efforts overseas.
President Donald Trump’s government has pledged at least $9m to Myanmar after the magnitude 7.7 quake. But his administration’s massive cuts to USAID have hindered its ability to respond, while China, Russia, India and other nations have rushed in assistance.
The Trump administration has moved to fire nearly all USAID staff in recent weeks, as billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has slashed funding and dismissed contractors across the federal bureaucracy in what it calls an attack on wasteful spending.
The three USAID workers have been sleeping on the streets in the earthquake zone, Wong said, adding that their terminations would take effect in a few months.
Residents have been sleeping outside for fear of aftershocks and further building collapses.
Wong said she is in contact with the remaining USAID staff and that she heard about the terminations after an all-staff meeting on Friday.
Former USAID staff say most of the people who would have coordinated the response have been let go, while third-party implementing partners have lost contracts. The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday rejected criticism that Washington was slow to respond to the March 28 earthquake because USAID was dismantled.
Rather, he told reporters in Brussels, Myanmar was not “the easiest place to work”, saying the military government does not like the US and prevents it from operating in the country as it wants to.
The United Nations has said the junta was limiting humanitarian aid.
Rubio said the US would no longer be the world’s top humanitarian donor, calling on other wealthy nations to step up in assisting Myanmar.
