Myanmar junta declares temporary truce as quake death toll passes 3,000

# Myanmar junta declares temporary truce as quake death toll passes 3,000

Event date: 2025-04-02

Myanmar’s ruling military said on the event date that it would observe a temporary ceasefire in the country’s civil war to help relief efforts after a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake, even as the disaster’s death toll climbed past 3,000 and rescuers kept searching for survivors.

The military announcement, broadcast on state television MRTV, said the truce would last until April 22 and was intended to show sympathy for people affected by the quake. The move followed unilateral temporary ceasefires declared earlier by armed resistance groups opposed to military rule. It was presented as a wartime pause tied directly to the emergency response rather than a broader political settlement.

State media said the quake had killed 3,003 people, injured 4,639 and left 373 missing. Those numbers highlighted the scale of the disaster in a country that had already been battered by years of conflict and displacement. The United Nations has said some 3 million people in Myanmar have been displaced from their homes and 20 million were in need of aid even before the earthquake struck, which means the quake hit an already weakened humanitarian system.

Amid the grim toll, there was at least one rescue. A 26-year-old hotel worker, Naing Lin Tun, was pulled alive from rubble five days after the tremor by a joint Burmese-Turkish team. Rescuers used an endoscopic camera to locate him and verify that he was still breathing before removing him and taking him to a local hospital. That rare survival offered a brief contrast to the wider scale of destruction and loss.

The ceasefire announcement came as international pressure grew for the military junta to allow more aid and reduce hostilities. The United Nations urged Myanmar’s rulers to halt fighting with rebels in response to the disaster, and UN special envoy Julie Bishop called on both sides to focus on protecting civilians, including aid workers, and on delivering life-saving assistance. China said it had delivered aid in cash through its embassy in Naypyitaw, one of the few foreign diplomatic missions maintained continuously in Myanmar.

At the same time, reports indicated that fighting had not stopped entirely. The DW report said the military had launched strikes in recent days despite the quake and a partial truce agreement, underscoring the fragility of any pause in hostilities. That detail matters because a ceasefire that exists on paper does not necessarily guarantee quiet on the ground, especially in a conflict where trust between the parties is already limited.

The quake also affected neighboring countries. In Thailand, damage was mostly localized to a construction site in Bangkok, but the death toll there had risen to 22 by Wednesday, according to the report. The broader regional impact showed that the earthquake was not just a Myanmar crisis but a cross-border emergency.

For Myanmar, the new ceasefire was a humanitarian measure layered on top of a war still unresolved. The country’s military used the announcement to project concern for quake victims, while the opposition and the United Nations continued to press for more than a temporary pause. The result on the event date was a fragile and limited reprieve, not an end to the conflict.