Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods

YANGON - Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request on Sept 14 for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have endured three years of war.

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 Sept 13, piling further misery on the country where war has been raging since the military seized power in 2021.

In Taungoo – around an hour south of the capital Naypyitaw – residents paddled makeshift rafts on flood waters that reached the roofs of some buildings.

Around 300 people were sheltering at a monastery on high ground in a nearby village.

“We are surrounded by water, and we don’t have enough food for everyone,” one man said. “We need food, water, and medicine as priority.”

Outside another temple, Buddhist nuns in pink and orange robes waded through knee-deep water.

“I lost my rice, chickens, and ducks,” said farmer Naing Tun, who had brought his three cows to higher ground near Taungoo after flood waters inundated his village.

“I don’t care about the other belongings. Nothing else is more important than the lives of people and animals.”

The rain in the wake of Typhoon Yagi sent people across South-east Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and jet ski in Thailand.

“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” General Min Aung Hlaing said on Sept 13, 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 aid from abroad.

In 2023, 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”.

Agence France-Presse has contacted a spokesperson for the UN in Myanmar for comment.

After Cyclone Nargis killed at least 138,000 people in Myanmar in 2008, the then junta was accused of blocking emergency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies.

‘Terrible experience’

The junta gave a death toll on Sept 13 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 the central Mandalay region.

The local media reported that six people had been killed in a landslide on Sept 13 in Tachileik in eastern Shan state.

Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built Naypyitaw on Sept 14, AFP reporters said.

“Yesterday, we had only one meal,” Mr Naing Tun said from near Taungoo. “It is terrible to experience flooding because we cannot live our lives well when it happens.”

He added: “It can be okay for people who have money. But for the people who have to work day to day for their meals, it is not okay at all.”

More than 2.7 million people were already displaced in Myanmar by conflict triggered by the junta’s 2021 coup.

The Vietnam authorities said on Sept 14 that 262 people were dead and 83 missing.

Meanwhile, images from Laos capital Vientiane showed houses and buildings inundated by the Mekong River. AFP