The death toll from a pow­er­ful 7.7 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in Myan­mar jumped to more than 1,000 on Sat­ur­day as more bod­ies were pulled from the rub­ble of the scores of build­ings that col­lapsed when it struck near the coun­try’s sec­ond-largest city.

The coun­try’s mil­i­tary-led gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment that 1,002 peo­ple have now been found dead and an­oth­er 2,376 in­jured, with 30 oth­ers miss­ing. The state­ment sug­gest­ed the num­bers could still rise, say­ing “de­tailed fig­ures are still be­ing col­lect­ed.”

Myan­mar, al­so known as Bur­ma, is in the throes of a pro­longed civ­il war, which is al­ready re­spon­si­ble for a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. It makes move­ment around the coun­try both dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous, com­pli­cat­ing re­lief ef­forts and rais­ing fears that the death toll could still rise pre­cip­i­tous­ly.

The earth­quake struck mid­day Fri­day with an epi­cen­ter not far from Man­dalay, fol­lowed by sev­er­al af­ter­shocks, in­clud­ing one mea­sur­ing 6.4. It sent build­ings in many ar­eas top­pling to the ground, buck­led roads, caused bridges to col­lapse and burst a dam.

In the cap­i­tal, Naypyi­daw, crews worked Sat­ur­day to re­pair dam­aged roads, while elec­tric­i­ty, phone and in­ter­net ser­vices re­mained down for most of the city. The earth­quake brought down many build­ings, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple units that housed gov­ern­ment civ­il ser­vants, but that sec­tion of the city was blocked off by au­thor­i­ties on Sat­ur­day.

More dam­age in Thai­land

In neigh­bor­ing Thai­land, the quake rocked the greater Bangkok area, home to around 17 mil­lion peo­ple, and oth­er parts of the coun­try.

Bangkok city au­thor­i­ties said the num­ber of con­firmed dead was now 10, nine at the site of the col­lapsed high-rise un­der con­struc­tion near the cap­i­tal’s pop­u­lar Chatuchak mar­ket, while 78 peo­ple were still un­ac­count­ed for. Res­cue ef­forrs were con­tin­u­ing in the hope of find­ing ad­di­tion­al sur­vivors.

On Sat­ur­day, more heavy equip­ment was brought in to move the tons of rub­ble, but hope was fad­ing among friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers of the miss­ing that they would be found alive.

“I was pray­ing that that they had sur­vived but when I got here and saw the ru­in — where could they be? In which cor­ner? Are they still alive? I am still pray­ing that all six are alive,” said 45-year-old Narue­mol Thon­glek, sob­bing as she await­ed news about her part­ner, who is from Myan­mar, and five friends who worked at the site.

Waen­phet Pan­ta said she hadn’t heard from her daugh­ter Kan­laya­nee since a phone call about an hour be­fore the quake. A friend told her Kan­laya­nee had been work­ing high on the build­ing on Fri­day.

“I am pray­ing my daugh­ter is safe, that she has sur­vived and that she’s at the hos­pi­tal,” she said, Kan­laya­nee’s fa­ther sit­ting be­side her.

Thai au­thor­i­ties said that the quake and af­ter­shocks were felt in most of the coun­try’s provinces. Many places in the north re­port­ed dam­age to res­i­den­tial build­ings, hos­pi­tals and tem­ples, in­clud­ing in Chi­ang Mai, but the on­ly ca­su­al­ties were re­port­ed in Bangkok.

Myan­mar sits on a ma­jor fault line

Earth­quakes are rare in Bangkok, but rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in Myan­mar. The coun­try sits on the Sagaing Fault, a ma­jor north-south fault that sep­a­rates the In­dia plate and the Sun­da plate.

Bri­an Bap­tie, a seis­mol­o­gist with the British Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey, said that the quake caused in­tense ground shak­ing in an area where most of the pop­u­la­tion lives in build­ings con­struct­ed of tim­ber and un­re­in­forced brick ma­son­ry.

“When you have a large earth­quake in an area where there are over a mil­lion peo­ple, many of them liv­ing in vul­ner­a­ble build­ings, the con­se­quences can of­ten be dis­as­trous,” he said in a state­ment.

A nat­ur­al dis­as­ter on top of a civ­il war

Myan­mar’s gov­ern­ment said that blood was in high de­mand in the hard­est-hit ar­eas. In a coun­try where pri­or gov­ern­ments some­times have been slow to ac­cept for­eign aid, Min Aung Hlaing said that Myan­mar was ready to ac­cept out­side as­sis­tance.

Myan­mar’s mil­i­tary seized pow­er from the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Aung San Suu Kyi in Feb­ru­ary 2021, and is now in­volved in a civ­il war with long-es­tab­lished mili­tias and new­ly formed pro-democ­ra­cy ones.

Mil­i­tary forces con­tin­ued their at­tacks even af­ter the quake, with three airstrikes in north­ern Kayin state, al­so called Karen­ni state, and south­ern Shan — both of which bor­der Man­dalay state, said Dave Eu­bank, a for­mer U.S. Army Spe­cial Forces sol­dier who found­ed the Free Bur­ma Rangers, a hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid or­ga­ni­za­tion that has pro­vid­ed as­sis­tance to both com­bat­ants and civil­ians in Myan­mar since the 1990s.

Eu­bank told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that in the area he was op­er­at­ing in, most vil­lages have al­ready been de­stroyed by the mil­i­tary so the earth­quake had lit­tle im­pact.

“Peo­ple are in the jun­gle and I was out in the jun­gle when the earth­quake hit — it was pow­er­ful, but the trees just moved, that was it for us, so we haven’t had a di­rect im­pact oth­er than that the Bur­ma army keeps at­tack­ing, even af­ter the quake,” he said.

In north­ern Shan, an airstrike on a rebel-con­trolled vil­lage just min­utes af­ter the earth­quake killed sev­en mili­tia mem­bers and dam­aged five build­ings, in­clud­ing a school, Mai Rukow, ed­i­tor of a Shan-based on­line me­dia Shwe Phee Myay News Agency, told the AP.

Gov­ern­ment forces have lost con­trol of much of Myan­mar, and many places are in­cred­i­bly dan­ger­ous or sim­ply im­pos­si­ble for aid groups to reach. More than 3 mil­lion peo­ple have been dis­placed by the fight­ing and near­ly 20 mil­lion are in need, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

“Al­though a full pic­ture of the dam­age is still emerg­ing, most of us have nev­er seen such de­struc­tion,” said Haider Yaqub, Myan­mar coun­try di­rec­tor for the NGO Plan In­ter­na­tion­al, from Yan­gon.

Con­trol tow­er at Myan­mar air­port col­lapsed

Satel­lite pho­tos from Plan­et Labs PBC an­a­lyzed by the AP show the earth­quake top­pled the air traf­fic con­trol tow­er at Naypy­itaw In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port as if sheered from its base.

De­bris lay scat­tered from the top of the tow­er, which con­trolled all air traf­fic in the cap­i­tal of Myan­mar, the pho­tos showed on Sat­ur­day.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear if there had been any in­juries in the col­lapse, though the tow­er would have had staff in­side of it at the time of the earth­quake Fri­day.

Res­cue groups head to Myan­mar

Chi­na and Rus­sia are the largest sup­pli­ers of weapons to Myan­mar’s mil­i­tary, and were among the first to step in with hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid.

Chi­na said it has sent more than 135 res­cue per­son­nel and ex­perts along with sup­plies like med­ical kits and gen­er­a­tors, and pledged around $13.8 mil­lion in emer­gency aid. Hong Kong sent a 51-mem­ber team to Myan­mar.

Rus­sia’s Emer­gen­cies Min­istry said it had flown in 120 res­cuers and sup­plies, and the coun­try’s Health Min­istry said Moscow had sent a med­ical team to Myan­mar.

Oth­er coun­tries like In­dia and South Ko­rea are send­ing help, and the U.N. al­lo­cat­ed $5 mil­lion to start re­lief ef­forts.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Fri­day that Wash­ing­ton was go­ing to help with the re­sponse, but some ex­perts were con­cerned about this ef­fort giv­en his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s deep cuts in for­eign as­sis­tance.

Jer­ry Harmer and Grant Peck in Bangkok, Sim­i­na Mis­tre­anu in Taipei, Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Ko­rea, and Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed to this re­port.

By DAVID RIS­ING and JIN­TA­MAS SAK­SORN­CHAI

BANGKOK (AP)