“The state will make inquiries on the situation quickly and conduct rescue operations along with providing humanitarian aid,” it said in a statement, according to Reuters.

A Red Cross spokesperson in Yangon told reporters that the damage to public infrastructure included roads, bridges, and public buildings, adding that there were also concerns over the state of large-scale dams.

“The bridge that connects Mandalay to Sagaing has collapsed — this will cause logistical issues, Marie Manrique, the Red Cross program coordinator in Yangon said, adding, “Sagaing has the largest number of internally displaced people in the country.”

At least three people were killed after a mosque partially collapsed, Reuters reported.

In addition to the collapsed 90-year-old bridge in the Sagaing region just southwest of Mandalay, sections of the highway connecting Mandalay with Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were damaged, the AP reported. The quake also damaged religious shrines and some homes in Naypyitaw.

The overall extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but Myanmar’s government said blood was in high demand in the hardest-hit areas, and videos from the country showed multiple collapsed houses and buckled and cracked roads. 

Getting humanitarian relief into the worst-hit areas of Myanmar “might not be politically easy,” said Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London.

He noted that in 2008, when Cyclone Nargis killed more than 130,000 people in Myanmar, the government took days to accept significant aid and then hindered its delivery. The military has tightly regulated entry into the country since seizing power in a coup in 2021.