Myanmar’s junta chief has requested foreign aid after catastrophic floods devastated large areas of the conflict-torn country, displacing more than 235,000 people, state media said on Saturday.
“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
More than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods triggered by deadly Typhoon Yagi, the junta said Friday, piling further misery on the country hit by conflict since the military seized power in 2021.
It 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.
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 a powerful cyclone that hit the west of the country.
The United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”
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.
( Source: Reuters)
