Myanmar junta makes rare request for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods

TAUNGOO, Myanmar: Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request on Saturday (Sep 14) for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have already endured three years of war.
Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.
In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said on Friday, piling further misery on the country where war has raged since the military seized power in 2021.
In Taungoo – around an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw – residents paddled makeshift rafts on floodwaters that reached the roofs of some buildings.
Around 300 people were sheltering at a monastery on high ground in a nearby village.
“We are surrounded by water and we don’t have enough food for everyone,” one man said.
“We need food, water, and medicine as priority.”
Outside another temple, Buddhist nuns in pink and orange robes waded through knee-deep water.
“I lost my rice, chickens, and ducks,” said farmer Naing Tun, who had brought his three cows to higher ground near Taungoo after floodwaters inundated his village.
“I don’t care about the other belongings. Nothing else is more important than the lives of people and animals,” he told AFP.
The rains in the wake of Typhoon Yagi sent people across Southeast Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and jetski in Thailand.
“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
“It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible,” he was quoted as saying.
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 powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.
At the time the United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”
The UN’s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Myanmar said it could not currently comment on the junta’s request for foreign aid.
“It is estimated that thousands of people have been forced to flee, but numbers are difficult to verify amid telecommunications blockages and a challenging operational context,” a spokesperson told AFP.
A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Myanmar said it had no comment on the request.
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.
The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country’s fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.
A military spokesman 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.
Local media reported that six people had been killed in a landslide on Friday in Tachileik in eastern Shan state.
Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built capital Naypyidaw on Saturday, AFP reporters said.
“Yesterday we had only one meal,” farmer Naing Tun said.
“It is terrible to experience flooding because we cannot live our lives well when it happens,” he added.
“It can be okay for people who have money. But for the people who have to work day to day for their meals, it is not okay at all.”
More than 2.7 million people were already displaced in Myanmar by conflict triggered by the junta’s 2021 coup.
Vietnam authorities said on Saturday that 262 people were dead and 83 missing.
Images from Laos capital Vientiane, meanwhile, showed houses and buildings inundated by the Mekong river.