The death toll from the earth­quake that hit Myan­mar near­ly a week ago rose Thurs­day to 3,145 as search and res­cue teams found more bod­ies, the mil­i­tary-led gov­ern­ment said, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid groups scram­bled to pro­vide sur­vivors med­ical care and shel­ter.

In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Maung Maung Ohn al­so an­nounced at a meet­ing in the cap­i­tal, Naypy­itaw, that 4,589 peo­ple were in­jured and 221 oth­ers were miss­ing, state tele­vi­sion MRTV re­port­ed.

The epi­cen­tre of the 7.7 mag­ni­tude quake on March 28 was near Man­dalay, Myan­mar’s sec­ond-largest city. It brought down thou­sands of build­ings, buck­led roads and de­stroyed bridges in mul­ti­ple re­gions.

Lo­cal me­dia re­ports of ca­su­al­ties have been much high­er than the of­fi­cial fig­ures. With telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions wide­ly out and many places dif­fi­cult to reach, the num­bers could rise sharply as more de­tails come in.

A re­port is­sued Thurs­day by the U.N. Of­fice for the Co­or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs es­ti­mat­ed that the earth­quake and af­ter­shocks have af­fect­ed more than 17 mil­lion peo­ple across 57 of the coun­try’s 330 town­ships, in­clud­ing more than 9 mil­lion who were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

“The com­ing days will be crit­i­cal in de­ter­min­ing the full scale of the dis­as­ter’s im­pact and the re­sponse re­quired to meet the needs of mil­lions af­fect­ed,” it said.

U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res said U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an chief Tom Fletch­er and spe­cial en­voy Julie Bish­op will ar­rive in Myan­mar on Fri­day.

The sec­re­tary-gen­er­al ap­pealed to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to im­me­di­ate­ly step up fund­ing for quake vic­tims “to match the scale of this cri­sis,” and urged unim­ped­ed ac­cess to reach those in need.

“The earth­quake has su­per­charged the suf­fer­ing – with the mon­soon sea­son just around the cor­ner,” he said.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said that ac­cord­ing to its ini­tial as­sess­ment, four hos­pi­tals and one health cen­tre had been com­plete­ly de­stroyed, while an­oth­er 32 hos­pi­tals and 18 health cen­tres had been par­tial­ly dam­aged.

“With in­fra­struc­ture com­pro­mised and pa­tient num­bers surg­ing, ac­cess to health care has be­come near­ly im­pos­si­ble in many of the worst-hit ar­eas,” the U.N. said. “Thou­sands of peo­ple are in ur­gent need of trau­ma care, sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tions and treat­ment for dis­ease out­breaks.”

A mo­bile hos­pi­tal from In­dia and a joint Russ­ian-Be­laru­sian hos­pi­tal al­so were now op­er­at­ing in Man­dalay.

With many left home­less by the quake, and many oth­ers stay­ing away from their homes be­cause of fears that on­go­ing af­ter­shocks will bring them down, work­ers in Naypy­itaw laboured in the 40 C (104 F) heat to busi­ly erect big tents in open fields to pro­vide some shel­ter.

In Man­dalay, lo­cal res­i­dents gave slices of wa­ter­mel­on to Chi­nese vol­un­teers tak­ing a break from the high tem­per­a­tures.

More than 1,550 in­ter­na­tion­al res­cuers were op­er­at­ing along­side lo­cals on Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the mil­i­tary. Res­cue sup­plies and equip­ment have been sent by 17 coun­tries.

Myan­mar’s mil­i­tary seized pow­er in 2021 from the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Aung San Suu Kyi, spark­ing what has turned in­to a civ­il war.

The quake wors­ened an al­ready dire hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, with more than 3 mil­lion peo­ple dis­placed from their homes and near­ly 20 mil­lion in need even be­fore it hit, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

As con­cerns grew that on­go­ing fight­ing could ham­per hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid ef­forts, the mil­i­tary de­clared a tem­po­rary cease­fire Wednes­day, through April 22. The an­nounce­ment fol­lowed uni­lat­er­al tem­po­rary cease­fires an­nounced by armed re­sis­tance groups op­posed to mil­i­tary rule.

The mil­i­tary said that it would still take “nec­es­sary” mea­sures against those groups, if they use the cease­fire to re­group, train or launch at­tacks.

Al­ready on Thurs­day, there were re­ports from lo­cal me­dia in Kachin state in the north of Myan­mar that mil­i­tary at­tacks con­tin­ued in sev­er­al ar­eas, but they couldn’t be in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firmed.

Pri­or to the earth­quake, the mil­i­tary was bat­tling the Kachin In­de­pen­dence Army mili­tia group. The KIA on Wednes­day al­so de­clared a cease­fire but re­served the right to de­fend it­self. It was un­clear how the re­port­ed fight­ing broke out.

The earth­quake shook Kachin, but there have been no re­ports of dam­age there.

In Bangkok, where the quake brought down a sky­scraper un­der con­struc­tion, the search for sur­vivors and bod­ies con­tin­ued as Gov. Chad­chart Sit­tipunt said that a pos­si­ble sound of life was de­tect­ed in the rub­ble. By near day’s end, how­ev­er, no­body was found.

Twen­ty-two peo­ple were killed and 35 in­jured in the city, most­ly by the col­lapse of the un­fin­ished build­ing.

Jin­ta­mas Sak­sorn­chai con­tributed to this re­port.

BANGKOK (AP) —