They pulled people out of the ruins with their bare hands; Testimonies reveal all the horror in Myanmar VIDEO

For hours, rescuers dug through the rubble, desperately searching for survivors.

"We were cleaning the building using excavators and rescuing people with hand tools," said Thar Nge, a volunteer who pointed out how much better equipment they needed - metal cutters and generators - but they were using what they had.

Thar helped save a four-year-old girl. She begged him over and over to save her, he said. He held a water bottle to her mouth before her dusty body was pulled from the rubble.

The girl was among 12 children who were rescued, along with four teachers. Unfortunately, 16 children and a teacher were found dead. Thar Nge had no time to feel any emotion from the adrenaline that flooded his body. Later he just moved on. His team of 11 volunteers continued to move around Kyaukse, one of the many areas affected by Friday's earthquake, the Guardian writes.

Similar scenes unfolded across central Myanmar, with teams of volunteers using whatever they had to free survivors - digging with their bare hands and crawling through collapsed buildings, often without protective gear.

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The injured were taken to hospitals that were already overburdened before the accident and now became completely overwhelmed. According to Myanmar's military junta, more than 1,700 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured in the earthquake. However, leading experts warn that it could be days or weeks until the true scale of the disaster is revealed.

Images on social media showed the devastation - historic monasteries, pagodas and mosques in central areas collapsed or partially collapsed, wooden houses on stilts around Shan State's famous Inle Lake were destroyed. There are pictures of damaged apartment buildings, hotels and roads. There are also appeals from desperate relatives on the nets.

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On Facebook, a man in Mandalay called for help, filming a pile of concrete slabs, wooden beams and metal rods. His mother and children were under the rubble, he said. No one came to their rescue.

The son's cry for his mother trapped in the ruins

In another video, an emotional man pleads for his mother. He sits next to her body, still trapped in the rubble, holding her hand.

"Please go to a better life, mom. Don't worry about me," says the man, who lives in Myanmar's capital, which was badly hit by the earthquake.

One rescuer said the teams worked through the night, adding that the hardest part was giving up the people who were trapped.

"I feel very heavy. There are still many bodies to be recovered," said a volunteer who wished to remain anonymous. The bodies were sent to the morgue in the city, but there was no electricity.

Unfortunately, there simply aren't enough teams in Myanmar to answer all the calls.

"Teams from humanitarian organizations and youth groups are cooperating in the rescue. Yesterday there were incidents everywhere. We have to deal with the human resources we have," said Thein Min Tun, another volunteer in Mandalay.

The earthquake further exacerbates the already dire situation in Myanmar, which has been wracked by conflict since 2021, when the military seized power, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The currency, the kyat, has since collapsed, and 15.2 million people – nearly a third of Myanmar's population – are facing severe hardship.

On Friday, Myanmar's junta issued a rare appeal for foreign humanitarian aid.

For now, volunteers are doing what they can. After the kindergarten, Thar Nge's team went to a collapsed silk and cloth shop where seven people were trapped, a restaurant where six bodies were found, a tea house where two bodies were discovered and a market where three more were found.

Hopes of finding more survivors in the rubble began to fade in Mandalay, where most residents spent another night outdoors after the devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake that left more than 1,700 dead in Myanmar and Thailand.

However, the incredible case that a woman was rescued alive after 60 hours spent under the ruins of the hotel, after a five-hour operation by rescue teams from China, Russia and Myanmar, shows that everything is not so dire.