Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in the throes of a prolonged and bloody civil war, which is already responsible for a massive humanitarian crisis.

The new total of 1,644 is a sharp rise over the 1,002 total announced just hours earlier, underlining the difficulty of confirming casualties over a widespread region and the likelihood that the

A rescue team in Mandalay, the city closest to the earthquake's epicentre, tells the BBC they "are digging people out with our bare hands".

Aid workers delivered the first shipments of help to Myanmar, but will have to cross a country buckled by the disaster and divided by civil war, arms dealers and drug syndicates.

A powerful earthquake killed more than 140 people in Myanmar on Friday, authorities said, toppling buildings and wrecking infrastructure across a wide area, including a skyscraper under construction in neighbouring Thailand.

Tremors from the earthquake in central Myanmar travelled as far as Bangkok in neighbouring Thailand. In the Thai capital, rescuers are searching the rubble after a large building collapsed.

Charles says he and the Queen were shocked and saddened by the disaster, which has claimed at least 1,600 lives.

In the hours after a massive earthquake flattened buildings in Myanmar's Mandalay on Friday, survivors scrambled through the debris using their bare hands in desperate attempts to save those still trapped.

In a censored nation that runs on rumor and omens, people in Myanmar wonder whether the latest disaster might be a portent of regime change.