Myanmar earthquake: Woman rescued from collapsed apartment block

RESCUERS pulled a woman alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building in Mandalay on Saturday, 30 hours after a devastating quake hit Myanmar.

Phyu Lay Khaing, 30, was brought out of the Sky Villa Condominium by rescuers and carried by stretcher to be embraced by her husband Ye Aung and taken to the hospital.

Exhausted, overwhelmed rescuers in Myanmar's second-biggest city pleaded for help Saturday as they struggled to free hundreds of people trapped in buildings destroyed by a devastating earthquake.

Friday's shallow 7.7-magnitude quake destroyed dozens of buildings in Mandalay, the country's cultural capital and home to more than 1.7 million people.

In one street, a monastery's clock tower lay collapsed on its side, its hands pointing to 12:55 pm -- just minutes after the time the quake struck.

Among the worst-hit buildings in the city is the Sky Villa Condominium development, where more than 90 people are feared to be trapped.

The building's 12 storeys were reduced to six by the quake, the cracked pastel green walls of the upper floors perched on the crushed remains of the lower levels.

A woman's body stuck out of the wreckage, her arm and hair hanging down.

Rescuers clambered over the ruins, painstakingly removing pieces of rubble and wreckage by hand as they sought to open up passageways to those trapped inside.

Scattered around were the remains of people's lives - a child's plastic bunny toy, pieces of furniture, and a picture of the New York skyline.

Some residents sheltered under the shade of nearby trees, where they had spent the night, a few possessions they had managed to salvage -- blankets, motorbike helmets -- alongside them.

Elsewhere, rescuers in flip-flops and minimal protective equipment picked by hand over the remains of buildings, shouting into the rubble in the hope of hearing the answering cry of a survivor.

"There are many victims in condo apartments. More than 100 were pulled out last night," one rescue worker who requested anonymity told AFP.

- AFP