Hundreds feared dead as quake hits Myanmar and Thailand, with dozens trapped in collapsed Bangkok building

This earthquake could “not have come at a worst time for Myanmar”, Joe Freeman, Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher, tells me.

More than three million people are internally displaced in the country, while the UN estimates more than a third of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance. It also comes as the US has frozen most foreign aid, impacting human rights and humanitarian relief in Myanmar.

The epicentre of the earthquake is in central Myanmar, which Freeman describes as the “heartland” of the ongoing conflict in the country.

“There are so many issues already impacting civilians there – military airstrikes, clashes between resistance groups and the military and different towns under different control,” he says when we speak – adding those, plus the quake, are “going to make delivery of aid all the more complicated”.

Freeman says Myanmar’s military has a “well-documented history of denying aid to areas where groups who resist are active” – and calls for the military to “allow unimpeded humanitarian access” to areas that are affected, prioritising “the needs of civilians