At least 144 people have been killed and 730 others injured in Myanmar following a powerful earthquake, according to the head of the country’s military government.

“The death toll and injuries are expected to rise,” Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said on television.

The 7.7 magnitude quake struck around midday local time at a shallow depth of six miles, with the epicentre about 10 miles from the second city of Mandalay. There were also aftershocks, with one measuring a strong 6.4 magnitude 12 minutes later.

Neighbouring Thailand was also rocked by the earthquake, with nine people killed in the capital Bangkok, including eight who died after a skyscraper, which had been under construction, collapsed.

Follow live: Myanmar earthquake latest

Rescuers searching through the rubble of the tower block for survivors have said more than 100 people were missing.

Footage showed the high-rise in the Chatuchak area crashing to the ground as people ran away from the scene.

In Myanmar, buildings in five cities and towns collapsed, along with a railway bridge and a road bridge on the Yangon-Mandalay Expressway, state media reported.

Images showed the destroyed Ava Bridge over the Irrawaddy River, with its arches leaning into the water.

A rescue worker from the Moe Saydanar charity group said it had retrieved at least 60 bodies from monasteries and buildings in Pyinmanar, near the capital Naypyidaw, and more people were trapped.

‘Building collapsed in front of my eyes’

“We all ran out of the house as everything started shaking,” a Mandalay resident said.

“I witnessed a five-storey building collapse in front of my eyes. Everyone in my town is out on the road and no one dares to go back inside buildings.”

Another Mandalay resident said destruction stretched across the whole city, and one neighbourhood, Sein Pan, was on fire.

Roads were damaged, phone lines disrupted and there was no electricity, they said.

Other eyewitnesses said three people died while praying when a mosque partially collapsed in the Bago Region. Images have also emerged of a destroyed temple in Naypyidaw.

Meanwhile, local media has reported that at least two people died and 20 were injured after a hotel collapsed in Aung Ben.

Civil war in Myanmar

The natural disaster comes as the country is in the grip of a civil war.

The ruling military junta said a state of emergency has been declared in Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Magway Region and northeastern Shan State, Nay Pyi Taw Council Area, and Bago Region.

The junta added in a statement: “The government has ordered a rapid investigation of the damage in these areas, We will carry out relief and relief operations promptly. We will also work to provide necessary disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.”

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Eyewitnesses describe earthquake hitting Myanmar and Bangkok

The Red Cross has said downed power lines are adding to challenges for their teams trying to reach Mandalay and Sagaing regions and southern Shan state.

The largest earthquake in this region in nearly 80 years

Tom Clarke

Science and technology editor

@t0mclark3

The world’s highest mountain range – the Himalayas – is testament to the power of plate tectonics.

Forced upwards by the gradual northward push of the Indian plate into the Eurasian plate.

It’s a power that’s almost impossible to imagine until just a tiny fraction of it is suddenly released.

And that’s what happened just six miles beneath the feet of 1.2 million people living in the city Mandalay and surrounding settlements.

A fault line along that Indian-Eurasian plate boundary runs almost directly beneath the city.

Over decades, as the plates grind past each other, tension builds up in the subsurface rock. When it finally gives, an earthquake is the result.

Such strike-slip faults as they’re known don’t generate the world’s most powerful earthquakes. That dubious honour goes to subduction zones in places like Sumatra and Japan that generate the magnitude 9 earthquakes that caused the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 or the Tohoku tsunami of 2011.

A magnitude 7.7 quake is still extremely powerful and destructive if it occurs shallow in the Earth’s crust and close to population centres. This did both.

Recent history has an important role to play too. Large earthquakes in this region happen every decade or so. But the last one of this size in the Sagaing region was in 1946.

That pre-dates the development of modern earthquake building codes. Reconstruction in Mandalay and beyond after that event will have resulted in buildings vulnerable to collapse from shaking of this magnitude and possibly already weakened by previous events.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people poured out of buildings in Bangkok after the tremors, with many buildings evacuated.

The city is home to 17 million people and many live in high-rise apartments.

Alarms went off in buildings as the earthquake hit around 1.30pm local time (6.30am UK time).

Footage on social media has shown water being thrown down the side of buildings from rooftop swimming pools.

All flights in and out of Bangkok are operating normally following the earthquake, the country’s civil aviation department said on Friday.

Israel has carried out a strike on Beirut for the first time since it agreed a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in November.

The Israeli military says the strike targeted a Hezbollah drone storage facility in Dahiyeh, in the city’s southern suburbs, which it called a key Hezbollah stronghold and where support for the militant group is strong.

Israel’s army used a post on X in Arabic to urgently warn people to evacuate parts of a Beirut suburb on Friday as it vowed to retaliate against strikes that it said were launched from Lebanon into northern Israel.

Hezbollah denied firing the rockets at northern Israel, and accused Israel of seeking a pretext to continue attacking Lebanon.

Lebanon’s government ordered all schools and universities in Beirut’s southern suburb of Hadath to close for the day.

Shooting could be heard in some parts of the southern suburbs, warning people to leave their homes, and many residents were seen fleeing the area in cars and on foot.

Associated Press reporters in Beirut said they heard a large boom and saw smoke rising from where Israel’s military had said it would strike, a residential and commercial area containing at least two schools.

Though it’s the first Israeli strike on Beirut since November’s ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group, Israel has struck targets in southern Lebanon almost daily since then.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Friday that if there was no peace in Israel’s northern communities, there would be no peace in Beirut either.

Hezbollah began launching rockets, drones, and missiles into Israel the day after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel.

In September, Israel carried out waves of airstrikes and killed most of Hezbollah’s senior leaders as the bubbling conflict became an all-out war.

More than 4,000 people in Lebanon died, while around 60,000 Israelis were displaced.

Under the ceasefire that halted the fighting, Israeli forces were supposed to withdraw from all Lebanese territory by late January.

The deadline was extended to 18 February, but Israeli troops have remained in five locations in Lebanon across from communities in northern Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel has carried out dozens of airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, saying it attacked Hezbollah, while continuing drone attacks that have killed several members of the militant group.

Israeli strikes in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Tibnit on Friday killed three people and injured 18, including children and women, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

Six people died in Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Lebanon last week.

The UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said the escalation was deeply concerning, calling it a “critical period for Lebanon and the wider region”.

According to an Israeli official who was not authorised to speak to the media, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting top security officials to discuss an impending strike on the capital.

The escalation came as Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas by launching a surprise wave of strikes that killed hundreds of people in Gaza.

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Earlier this month, Israel halted deliveries of food, fuel, medicine, and humanitarian aid to Gaza’s roughly two million Palestinians.

Israel has vowed to escalate the war until Hamas returns 59 hostages it still holds – 24 of them believed to be alive. Israel is demanding that the group give up power, disarm, and send its leaders into exile.

Hamas has said it will release the remaining captives only in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire, and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The number of children killed in Gaza, according to the local health ministry, recently rose above 15,000.

Fatality figures in Gaza are disputed by Israel, but even allowing for miscalculation or exaggeration, it is a staggering loss of life.

Many children have been orphaned, losing not just both parents but also siblings, grandparents and other close relatives too.

Against this tragedy, the children of Gaza can’t dream of growing up.

War has robbed them of that.

‘I just want to forget’

“I’m here hanging out with my friends because I just want to forget the war,” Osama says, surrounded by other young boys, probably no older than 10.

“I look at my destroyed home there and think about the memories I had there with my mum and dad, in their room. And now it’s gone.

“We used to have fun every day, sit in the kitchen, play together at home, and now it’s all gone.

“I want to forget everything. I want to have fun.”

Israel continues to bombard Gaza

On Thursday, Egypt sent a delegation to Qatar in an attempt to push for a renewed ceasefire.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior security officials on Thursday night to discuss developments.

For now, Israel is continuing to attack Gaza daily and is refusing to lift a blockade on aid entering the Strip.

The United Nations has reported that cases of malnutrition among children in northern Gaza have almost doubled as a result.

Hundreds of children have also been killed since the resumption of attacks almost two weeks ago.

She danced until the war came home

Five-year-old Jenin liked to dance, like so many five-year-old girls around the world liked to dance.

She danced in the tent where her family was sheltering from the war nearby and she danced until the day that the war came home.

It was early in the morning when the missile struck – the family was getting ready for Suhoor, the Ramadan breakfast.

Twenty-five of Jenin’s relatives were killed, including her father and all of her brothers and sisters.

Her mother was already dead, killed in a previous strike.

Jenin now lies in a hospital bed, still unaware she has lost her family.

She is mostly unconscious – her skull fractured, she has bleeding on her brain and is in desperate need of surgery she cannot get in Gaza.

“She’s truly lost all sense of safety. She’s terrified by anyone who comes near her,” Jenin’s aunt told Sky News.

“Jenin has lost the ability to speak. The shock was so severe that she can no longer communicate verbally.”

She went on: “Instead, she points and gestures, but words elude her. Most of the time, she is angry and throws things around; her emotional state is drained.

“Sometimes she responds, but other times she doesn’t. When she looks at us, there’s a visible frustration in her eyes -frustration from not being able to see her mum.”

Another family that didn’t survive the night

In Gaza City, our team filmed another family that didn’t survive the night.

Rescuers searched for survivors but pulled out the bodies of four people.

Twelve-year-old Sameer was the only one to escape the strike. He sobbed in silent prayer next to the wrapped corpses of his parents and siblings. Another orphan in Gaza.

“One of my favourite memories with my family was a day at the beach,” he told us.

“We swam and played and had such a good time. I remember my brother walking back and spilling juice on himself. We laughed and told him off!”

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His family was buried together, side-by-side in a shallow grave. Sameer, the one who lived, watched on, silent and lost.

“I wasn’t scared before, because I had my family around me. Right now, I am scared to lose more people. My mum and dad and everyone were martyred. I’m worried about losing more people. So now whenever I hear the planes above, I think they’re going to bomb me in my home.”

There is no word for someone who has lost so much.

But in Gaza, there are so many children who have lost everything.

Their childhood, their families, their future.