Watch: Man pulled alive from Myanmar earthquake rubble after five days

A man buried under earthquake rubble for five days has been rescued in Myanmar.

The shallow 7.7-magnitude earthquake flattened buildings across the country on Friday, killing more than 2,700 people and making thousands more homeless.

Hopes of finding more survivors are fading, but there was a moment of joy on Wednesday when a man was pulled alive from the ruins of a hotel in the capital, Naypyidaw.

The 26-year-old hotel worker was rescued by a joint Myanmar-Turkish team shortly after midnight, the fire service and ruling military junta said.

Dazed and dusty but conscious, the man was pulled through a hole in the rubble and put on a stretcher, video posted on Facebook by the Myanmar fire brigade showed.

The death toll has now risen to 2,719, with more than 4,500 injured and 441 still missing.

However, with patchy communication and infrastructure delaying efforts to gather information and deliver aid, the true scale of the disaster has yet to become clear, and the toll is likely to rise.

Aid agencies said the response had been hindered by continued fighting between Myanmar’s junta and the complex patchwork of armed groups opposed to its rule, which began in a 2021 coup.

Several armed groups fighting the military have suspended hostilities during the earthquake recovery, but Min Aung Hlaing, chief of the ruling junta, vowed to continue “defensive activities” against “terrorists”.

UN agencies, human rights groups and foreign governments have urged all sides in Myanmar’s civil war to stop fighting and help those affected by the quake, the biggest to hit the country in decades.

Julie Bishop, the UN special envoy on Myanmar, called on all sides to “focus their efforts on the protection of civilians, including aid workers, and the delivery of life-saving assistance”.

Even before Friday’s earthquake, 3.5 million people were displaced by the fighting, many of them at risk of hunger, according to the United Nations.

Late on Tuesday, an alliance of three of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic minority armed groups announced a one-month pause in hostilities to support humanitarian efforts in response to the quake.

The announcement by the Three Brotherhood Alliance followed a separate partial ceasefire called by the People’s Defence Force – civilian groups that took up arms after the coup to fight junta rule.

But there have been multiple reports of junta air strikes against rebel groups since the earthquake.

“We are aware that some ethnic armed groups are currently not engaged in combat, but are organising and training to carry out attacks,” said Min Aung Hlaing, mentioning sabotage against the electricity supply.

“Since such activities constitute attacks, the tatmadaw [armed forces] will continue to carry out necessary defensive activities,” he said in a statement late on Tuesday.

Australia decried the reported air strikes, saying they “exacerbated the suffering of the people”.

Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign minister, said: “We condemn these acts and call on the military regime to immediately cease military operations and allow full humanitarian access to affected areas.”

Amnesty International said “inhumane” military attacks were complicating earthquake relief efforts.

Joe Freeman, the group’s Myanmar researcher, said: “You cannot ask for aid with one hand and bomb with the other.”

Hundreds of miles away in the Thai capital, Bangkok, workers continued to search through the rubble of a 30-storey skyscraper that collapsed in the tremors on Friday.

It had been under construction at the time, and its collapse buried dozens of builders – few of whom have come out alive.

The death toll at the site has risen to 22, with more than 70 still believed trapped in the rubble.