Myanmar’s earthquake piles misery on civil war

IT WILL TAKE some days for the full toll of the powerful earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28th to become clear. The epicentre lay just outside Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, which has a population of about 1.5m people. The earthquake’s magnitude was 7.7, the strongest recorded anywhere in the world since the quake that hit Turkey and Syria in 2023, killing 55,000. It is the biggest earthquake to hit the Myanmar mainland for three-quarters of a century. The tremor was felt by people across the region, including in Bangladesh, China, India, and Thailand. A day after it struck, the Myanmar authorities said that at least 1,600 people had died and that more than 3,400 people had been injured, numbers that are certain to rise further.