NDRF team returns from quake-hit Myanmar after retrieving 67 bodies

New Delhi: The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team that was rushed by India to earthquake-struck Myanmar to undertake relief and rescue operations has returned after retrieving 67 bodies.

The Richter 7.7 scale earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28 killing over 3,600 people.

The orange dungaree-donning personnel spent about a week in operations that they largely undertook in Mandalay, the country's second-largest city after capital Naypyitaw and closest to the epicentre of the quake, officials said Tuesday.

The rescuers landed in the neighbouring country, with whom India shares a 1,643-km international border, on March 29.

The 80-personnel-strong NDRF team finished its task and returned to the country on April 6. Other Indian relief teams like mobile hospitals, doctors and medics of the Army that were sent to Myanmar as part of 'Operation Brahma' continue to remain there to treat the victims and other locals, officials told PTI.

The Indian team was praised by the local authorities as they retrieved 67 bodies during their week-long deployment. The Chinese rescuers took out nine bodies while the Russians brought out one from the debris, they said.

All the rescue teams, including the NDRF, were operating in very hot weather and faced an uphill task to find lives as Myanmar saw a 'pancake' collapse of multiple buildings and houses leading to floors falling one over the other.

The NDRF used heavy slab cutters and hammers to go beneath the debris to find the living or the dead.

The force was tasked to launch rescue operations across 13 buildings as part of the 'Sector D' disaster rescue plan in Mandalay prepared by Myanmarese authorities.

The NDRF also pressed in four sniffer dogs that it took along in two Indian Air Force (IAF) sorties that landed in Naypyitaw on March 29.

The deadly quake has led to 3,600 deaths till now and the toll is still climbing, international press reports said.

Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for the military government, was on Monday quoted as saying that the death toll has reached 3,600, with 5,017 injured and 160 missing.

He added that search and rescue operations involved 1,738 personnel from 20 countries, and they helped find and extract 653 survivors.

The government spokesperson also said the quake has officially been named "the Big Mandalay Earthquake" to ensure consistency in future documentation and referencing, according to a report by the Associated Press (AP).

This was the fourth time that the NDRF, India's federal contingency force, was deployed abroad.

The last three were during the Japan Tsunami-triggered quake of 2011 and the temblors that hit Nepal in 2015 and Turkiye in 2023.