According to state media on Saturday, Myanmar’s head of the junta has requested international assistance after catastrophic floods destroyed large areas of the war-torn nation and forced more than 235,000 people to flee their homes.
“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
The junta announced on Friday that flooding caused by the catastrophic Typhoon Yagi had pushed more than 235,000 people from their homes, adding to the already dire situation in the war-torn nation since the military took control in 2021.
It said it was looking into claims that scores of people had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in the central Mandalay region and that it had lost touch with other parts of the country.
Foreign humanitarian aid has previously been obstructed or thwarted by Myanmar’s military. Last year it suspended travel authorisations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of a powerful cyclone that hit the west of the country.
The United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”
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.
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