A powerful 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on Friday, close to the country\u2019s second city of Mandalay, home to around 1 million people and historic temple complexes, with tremors shaking buildings as far away as the Thai capital of Bangkok. <\/p>\n
Video posted online from both countries showed panicked residents running from swaying residential towers as dust fills the air, and traffic comes to a sudden stop on busy city streets. <\/p>\n
Myanmar is already reeling from more than four years of civil war sparked by a bloody and economically destructive military coup, with has seen military forces battle rebel groups across the country. It remains one of Asia\u2019s poorest nations and is ill-equipped to deal with major natural disasters. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw other people running out of the buildings too. It was very sudden and very strong.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another resident said phone networks in the city home to around 8 million people were briefly down following the quake but were now running again. <\/p>\n
The epicenter was in nearby Sagaing region, which has been ravaged by the civil war, with the junta, pro-military militia and rebel groups battling for control and all running checkpoints, making travel by road or river extremely difficult. <\/p>\n
A resident in Thailand\u2019s northern city of Chiang Mai, who also did not want to be named, said \u201cI felt it for about ten seconds in my room then I figured out I couldn\u2019t stay inside. So I rushed out on to the street. <\/p>\n
Tremors were also felt in China\u2019s southwestern Yunnan province, according to Xinhua. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A powerful 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on Friday, close to the country\u2019s second city…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}