More than 150 people have been confirmed dead in the most powerful earthquake to strike Thailand in nearly 200 years, with officials warning that thousands of people are feared dead.

At least 144 people had been killed and 732 injured by the the 7.7 magnitude quake struck near Mandalay, Myanmar this morning, state-run MRTV said on the Telegram.

Preliminary reports confirmed at least eight people are dead in Bangkok, where a high-rise under construction collapsed, a Thai government official has confirmed.

The full extent of death, injury and destruction across the region is not immediately clear. Myanmar’s government says blood is in high demand in the hardest-hit areas.

‘The death toll and injuries are expected to rise,’ Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military government, said in a televised speech this evening. 

The total number of fatalities is ‘most likely to be in the range 10,000-100,000’, scientists have warned, citing the United States Geological Survey ‘PAGER’ forecast.

The massive quake, with an epicentre near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, struck at midday and was followed by a strong 6.4 magnitude aftershock. 

It also hit Thailand, where rescuers in the capital Bangkok were searching in the rubble of a tower block that had been under construction and collapsed.  

There were 117 people missing and five dead following the building collapse, according to the rescue operation. Crews are still pulling victims from the rubble.

Today’s quake is strongest tremor to hit Thailand since the 1839 Ava Earthquake, which the Myanmar Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences estimates had magnitude as high 8.3. The tremor hit present-day central Myanmar, killing hundreds.

The shallow tremor struck central Myanmar at 13.20 local time (6.50GMT), and was followed minutes later by a 6.4-magnitude aftershock.

The quake brought down multiple buildings, including the Ma Soe Yane monastery, one of the largest in Manadalay, and damaged the former royal palace. 

Christian Aid said its partners and colleagues on the ground reported that a dam burst in the city, causing water levels to rise in the lowland areas in the area. 

A rescue worker from the Moe Saydanar charity group told Reuters that it had retrieved at least 60 bodies from monasteries and buildings in Pyinmanar, near the capital city of Naypyidaw, and more people were trapped.

‘This 60 is only from my charity group and only at Pyinmanar town,’ he said.

Officials at a major hospital in Naypyidaw declared it a ‘mass casualty area’, with the death toll expected to rise after buildings fell and debris scattered.

‘I haven’t seen (something) like this before. We are trying to handle the situation. I’m so exhausted now,’ a doctor told the AFP news agency. 

Myanmar’s military junta is locked in a struggle to put down insurgents fighting its rule, a situation that is likely to complicate the rescue and relief operation.

Professor Ian Main, Personal Chair in Seismology and Rock Physics, School of GeoSciences, at the University of Edinburgh said: ‘The damage is likely to be very severe near the epicentre- based on the estimated intensity of ground shaking above, and maps of population density and vulnerability of buildings. 

The force caused a mosque in Mandalay to collapse, with at least ten worshippers reported to have been killed. 

More than 20 children are also believed to be trapped in a destroyed school in Taungoo, central Myanmar.

• Shallow 7.7 magnitude quake struck central Myanmar at 13.20 local time, just before 7am GMT
• Powerful quakes felt in Myanmar, Thailand, India and China today, causing hundreds of homes to collapse
• Monitoring group warns of tens of thousands of possible fatalities, with numbers still rising 
• Red Cross warns damage to infrastructure in Myanmar could see large dams could burst and flood huge areas
• At least three dead and 90 missing after high-rise apartment block collapses in Bangkok, Thailand
• Two were killed and 20 trapped when an eight-storey hotel in Aung Ben, Myanmar collapsed 

Shocking footage showed workers fleeing in neighbouring Thailand as a 30-storey high-rise building under construction in Bangkok collapsed around them.

A a mushroom cloud of dust and debris swept through the streets of northern Bangkok as the high-rise building was brought down by the quake. 

Wechayachai offered no more details about the ongoing rescue efforts, but first responders said that seven people had been rescued so far from the area.

At least two of the dead were construction workers who were killed by falling rubble or debris, rescue worker Songwut Wangpon told reporters. 

The building was being built by the China Railway Construction Corporation for Thailand’s government auditor general.

Workers in hard hats and orange hi-vis jackets were engulfed by dust as the concrete stack fell, with dozens who couldn’t get away trapped under the rubble.

‘I heard people calling for help, saying “help me”,’ Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP. 

‘I fear many lives have been lost. We have never experienced an earthquake with such a devastating impact before.’ 

Startled residents across the city were evacuated down staircases of high-rise buildings and hotels after the earthquake hit around 1.30pm local time. They remained in the streets, seeking shade from the midday sun in the minutes after the quake.

Rescuers at the collapse site were dwarfed by an enormous mound of rubble and tangled metal struts, just metres from the bustling Chatuchak Market, popular with tourists.

Elsewhere, people in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings were cautioned to stay outside in case there were more aftershocks.

Bangkok’s city hall declared the city a disaster area to facilitate the response. The greater metropolitan area is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise apartments.

The US Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ centre for geosciences said the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers(6.2 miles), according to preliminary reports. Shallower earthquakes tend to cause more damage. 

Chelsea King, a British expat living in Bangkok, told MailOnline that she was ushered away from her building by security guards as the initial quake struck.

She said she could see ‘towering skyscrapers … visibly swaying’.

‘Many of these buildings are condos or hotels with rooftop pools, and water was cascading down like waterfalls due to the force of the tremors.

‘The street was chaotic, with people running out of buildings, carrying pets and children, shouting in panic.

‘I was in shock, unable to process what I was seeing – it felt like something out of a disaster film.’

When they were finally allowed back in, she was able to rescue her cat, Mo, and pack a small bag of necessities before escaping down eight flights of stairs.

Chelsea was fortunate that her building ‘appears undamaged’. But she says friends are unable to return to their homes due to structural damage.

‘My partner, who teaches on the city’s outskirts, is also struggling to get back home, with the BTS and MRT [metro system] shut down and the roads at a standstill.’ 

Kelly Rhodes, a tourist staying at the Okura Prestige in Bangkok, told MailOnline they were evacuated down 24 flights of stairs when the quake struck.

As airlines began to halt some flights, she said: ‘We are now trying to organise flights out but it’s chaos.’

‘We can’t get out of the city. Traffic is at a standstill total gridlock.’

The earthquake was forceful enough to send water sloshing out of pools, some high above the street in high-rises, as the tremor shook.

Witnesses in Bangkok said people ran out onto the streets in panic, many of them hotel guests in bathrobes and swimming costumes as water cascaded down from an elevated pool at a luxury hotel. 

‘All of a sudden the whole building began to move, immediately there was screaming and a lot of panic,’ said Fraser Morton, a tourist from Scotland, who was in one of Bangkok’s many malls shopping for camera equipment.

‘I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators, lots of banging and crashing inside the mall.’

Like thousands of others in downtown Bangkok, Morton sought refuge in Benjasiri Park – away from the tall buildings all around.

‘I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense,’ he said. ‘Lots of chaos.’

Mandy Tang, 38, from London, was in a cinema in Bangkok on holiday when she experienced the tremors from the powerful earthquake.

She told the PA news agency: ‘I was watching a film called The Red Envelope. It happened to be quite an action-packed scene when the shake happened, so I initially thought it could have been Imax effect.

‘I looked around and none of the local audience left their seats. However, my Taiwanese friend insisted it’s an earthquake, so I walked out of the theatre with her, and we met the security guards coming to evacuate us just outside the theatre. We could see the doors were opening and closing, all the chairs were shaking.’

At a 1,000-bed general hospital in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, rows of wounded were treated outside the emergency department, some writhing in pain, others lying still as relatives sought to comfort them.

‘About 20 people died after they arrived at our hospital so far. Many people were injured,’ said a doctor at the hospital, who requested anonymity. 

The quake also damaged religious shrines in the capital, sending parts toppling to the ground, and some homes. 

In Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and close to the epicenter, the earthquake damaged part of the former royal palace and buildings, according to videos and photos released on Facebook social media.

While the area is prone to earthquakes, it is generally sparsely populated, and most houses are low-rise structures.

In the Sagaing region just southwest of Mandalay, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and some sections of the highway connecting Mandalay and Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were also damaged.

The Red Cross warned that there was still concern for the state of large dams, exposing risk of flooding.

‘Public infrastructure has been damaged, including roads, bridges and public buildings,’ Marie Manrique, Program Coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross told reporters.

‘We currently have concerns for large-scale dams that people are watching to see the conditions of them,’ she said.

‘The bridge that connects Mandalay to Sagaing has collapsed – this will cause logistical issues. Sagaing has the largest number of internally displaced people in the country.’

The earthquake hit Myanmar as it contests with a four-year civil war. 

The devastation prompted a rare request for international aid from the country’s isolated military junta, which has lost swathes of territory to armed groups, as it declared a state of emergency across the six worst-affected regions.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday the 27-nation bloc stood ready to help after a strong, deadly earthquake hit Myanmar and Thailand.

‘Heartbreaking scenes from Myanmar and Thailand after the devastating earthquake. My thoughts are with the victims and their families,’ von der Leyen wrote on X. ‘Europe’s Copernicus satellites are already helping first responders. We are ready to provide more support.’

The World Health Organization said it had triggered its emergency management system in response to Friday’s ‘huge’ earthquake in Myanmar and was mobilising its logistics hub in Dubai to prepare trauma injury supplies.

The WHO is coordinating its earthquake response from its Geneva headquarters ‘because we see this as a huge event’ with ‘clearly a very, very big threat to life and health’, spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a media briefing. 

‘We’ve activated our logistics hub to look particularly for trauma supplies and things like external fixators because we expect that there will be many, many injuries that need to be dealt with,’ Harris said.

She said the WHO would also be concentrating on getting in essential medicines, while the health infrastructure in Myanmar itself might be damaged.

Harris said that due to recent experience with the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, ‘we know very well what you need to send in first’. 

Tremors were also felt in China’s southwest Yunnan province, according to Beijing’s quake agency, which said the jolt measured 7.9 in magnitude.

Earthquakes are relatively common in Myanmar, where six strong quakes of 7.0 magnitude or more struck between 1930 and 1956 near the Sagaing Fault, which runs north to south through the centre of the country, according to the USGS.

A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake in the ancient capital Bagan in central Myanmar killed three people in 2016, also toppling spires and crumbling temple walls at the tourist destination.

The breakneck pace of development in Myanmar’s cities, combined with crumbling infrastructure and poor urban planning, has also made the country’s most populous areas vulnerable to earthquakes and other disasters, experts say.

The impoverished Southeast Asian nation has a strained medical system, especially in its rural states.