Pagodas and other buildings damaged as quake shake Myanmar
At least 66 stupas and pagodas in the ancient city of Bagan was damaged after magnitude 6.8 quake hits Myanmar.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the magnitude 6.8 quake hit near the town of Chauk, southwest of Mandalay. Tremors were felt as far away as Thailand, where witnesses reported high rise buildings swaying in Bangkok, and the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
The quake struck 25km (15.5 miles) west of Chauk, at a depth of 84km, the USGS records show.
Tremors were felt as far away as Thailand, Bangladesh and India, sending fearful residents into the streets.
The quake shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, killing at least three people including two children, local officials said, and damaging some of the famous pagodas in the Southeast Asian nation’s ancient capital of Bagan.
A fire department official from regional capital Magwe said two young girls were killed when a riverbank gave way in Yenanchaung township, south of Chauk.
One person was killed and another injured when a tobacco processing factory collapsed in the town of Pakkoku, to the north, the duty officer at the local fire department said.
There were no other confirmed casualties, and early reports suggested limited damage overall.
“My house shook during the quake. Many people were scared and they ran out of the buildings,” said Maung Maung Kyaw, a local official of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
“Some of the old buildings have cracks. The biggest damage is to the bank building in the town. The damage to other buildings isn’t that significant.”
At least 66 stupas in Bagan have been damaged, a spokesman from the department of archaeology said.
The ancient capital is a major tourist site, home to thousands of Buddhist monuments.
Myanmar is in a seismically active part of the world where the Indo-Australian Plate runs up against the Eurasian Plate.
In March, 2011, at least 74 people were killed in an earthquake in Myanmar near its borders with Thailand and Laos.