TAUNGOO: Myanmar's junta chief made a rare request on Saturday for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend. In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said on Friday. In Taungoo — around an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw — residents paddled makeshift rafts on floodwaters that reached the roofs of some buildings. Around 300 people were sheltering at a monastery on high ground in a nearby village.
The rains in the wake of typhoon Yagi sent people across Southeast Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and jetski in Thailand.
"Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims," junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. "It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible," he was quoted as saying.
Myanmar's military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.
Last year it suspended travel authorisations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country. At the time the United Nations slammed that decision as "unfathomable."
The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country's fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.
A military spokesman said it had lost contact with some areas of the country and was investigating reports that dozens had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in central Mandalay region. Local media reported that six people had been killed in a landslide on Friday in Tachileik in eastern Shan state. Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built capital Naypyidaw on Saturday. — AFP
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