It may be evening in Bangkok but rescuers are continuing to search the rubble of a high-rise, after it collapsed earlier.

Thailand's deputy prime minister has said 81 workers are trapped.

A couple of hours ago, the National Institute for Emergency Medicine said three people had been confirmed dead. We've not had an updated figure since then.

We'll bring you the latest on this as and when we get it - for now, though, you can see the night-time rescue operation below.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

While the earthquake we're reporting on hit Myanmar, it was felt in and has heavily affected parts of neighbouring Thailand, where we're also getting continuous updates.

Tom Beeston, a British man who lives in Bangkok, says the earthquake was "one of the weirdest things I've ever lived through".

He says luckily people who were with him knew what to do, so they ducked under the desks in his office building, on the 31st floor. They then rushed down the stairs alongside hundreds of other people.

"It was confusion and then a bit of panic," he tells our colleagues on the BBC News channel.

When they made it to the street, it was gridlocked, and full of people standing around.

"It's one of those things where you never think it could happen to you."

The effects of this 7.7 magnitude earthquake on the city of Mandalay - 21km away from the earthquake's epicentre - are beginning to be seen.

Images show huge piles of rubble from collapsed buildings.

As we've been reporting, Myanmar has suffered from power outages, with two major telecom companies down for large parts of the day in Mandalay.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Kristina Volk
BBC World Service

Guilaume D'Agaro is an English teacher in the south of Myanmar, in Yangon, and the earthquake hit when he and his students were outside in the school yard.

They felt the first wave of the earthquake and rushed the students inside to seek shelter under their desks.

He says it was "very scary for the kids", who are between three and 12 years old.

"You could feel the trees shaking, you could feel the lamp inside moving and you could feel the vibration under your feet," Guilaume adds.

Although he lives in the south of Myanmar, away from the epicentre, he's experiencing power cuts and internet interruptions, which he says "increases the difficulty to get in contact with friends and family in Mandalay".

Guilaume says he's worried and has heard nothing from Mandalay: "We are just hoping, that is the only thing we can do. We feel out of control."

"This population has been suffering so much in history and now we add a natural disaster to it. I hope one day we won't see the Burmese people as victims," he adds.

Image source, Guilaume D‘Agaro

A bit more about the city of Mandalay, just 20km from the quake's epicentrepublished at 13:50 Greenwich Mean Time 28 March

13:50 GMT 28 March

Ko Ko Aung
BBC World Service

The epicentre of today's earthquake was about 20km (12 miles) from Mandalay - Myanmar’s second-largest city where the last monarch, King Thibaw, resided until 1885 when the British took over the sovereign.

Details are still emerging but Mandalay is among the worst hit by the earthquake.

Videos on social media show part of the wall of the old palace compound damaged. Many buildings and pagodas have also been severely damaged. Emergency vehicles and residential cars are queuing in front of local hospitals, carrying injured people and bodies.

Mandalay is Myanmar’s commercial hub and also the cultural centre of the country, which borders a number of countries - including China.

In recent decades, the city has seen significant Chinese settlements with new investments. While this created job opportunities, many Burmese people resent what they see as Chinese domination.

After the military coup in 2021, Mandalay became a target of the opposition forces who often launch attacks on security forces. As the conflict in Myanmar enters another year, people are facing various difficulties such as shortages of electricity and household goods.

This earthquake, and the aftermath, adds pain on an already-suffering population.

Rachel Flynn
Live reporter

I've been in touch with someone in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city and commercial hub - and around 600km (289 miles) from the epicentre near Mandalay.

Wishing to remain anonymous because of the country's military regime, he says he's "shaken" after feeling the earthquake last for more than a minute just after 12:50 local time (06:50 GMT).

After a three-hour country-wide power outage, he says power has now been restored in Yangon and there doesn't appear to be any major damage other than "minor cracks".

In Mandalay, he says power is still out and two major telecom companies appear to have been offline for a large chunk of the day.

Photos he has been sent from Mandalay show three or four-storey buildings collapsing, which he says "paints a very grim picture of what's to come".

"There’s a lot of bad news that will come out of Mandalay once the telecoms are back up and running," he tells me, adding it's the "last thing Myanmar needs right now".

Kristina Volk
BBC World Service

I've been hearing from an eyewitness in the Shan State, close to the city of Mandalay, who says: "When the earthquake hit we were out in the open. I just don't have the words to say."

She lives in a camp for internally displaced persons and tells the BBC: "We are so afraid of natural disasters now on top of our various traumas through man-made disasters.

"We are just hearing the sirens everywhere, we don't know how big the impact is."

Images show damage to historic buildings in Mandalaypublished at 13:01 Greenwich Mean Time 28 March

13:01 GMT 28 March

By Matt Murphy

We're continuing to examine clips emerging from the city of Mandalay, in central Myanmar, just 20km (12 miles) from the epicentre of the earthquake.

We've verified a number of clips from the city - which once served as the country's royal capital - showing extensive damage to historic buildings.

One video we have authenticated shows heavily damaged parts of Mandalay Palace. The complex was built in the 1850s by Myanmar's royal family and was refurbished in the 1990s. Multiple verified images show extensive damage to the exterior walls, with some crumbling outwards towards the palace's moat, while at least one interior building has also collapsed.

Elsewhere, a video showed the Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda - a 40 minute drive south-east of Mandalay - collapsing (you can see that in our last post). Footage showed residents screaming as a tower snapped and fell away from the ancient temple, which is said to be over 1,000 years old.

Meanwhile, other clips showed a fire engulfing Mandalay University. Footage shared on social media - which we authenticated by cross referencing it with open source photos of the university campus - showed smoke billowing from the building. It is unclear how the blaze started.

Image source, Pyaye Phyo /Facebook

Various infrastructure has collapsed as a result of the 7.7 magnitude quake that hit central Myanmar earlier.

In the clip below, you can see the moment a pagoda topples, south-east of Mandalay, the country's second-largest city which sits close to where the epicentre of the quake has been identified.

Screams and audible distress can be heard from those watching.

Caroline Hawley
Diplomatic correspondent

Aid agencies are now scrambling to assess the humanitarian needs in Myanmar, and work out how to respond.

The country - ruled by a military junta - is isolated from the outside world. And it may take time to get aid workers in.

But the French news agency, AFP, says the junta has made a rare request for international help.

“We want the international community to give humanitarian aid as soon as possible,” a spokesman for the junta, Zaw Min Tun, told AFP reporters at a hospital in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.

• Just joining us or need a recap? Read our earlier round-up of everything we know at this stage

Oliver Slow
Live reporter

This earthquake could "not have come at a worst time for Myanmar", Joe Freeman, Amnesty International’s Myanmar researcher, tells me.

More than three million people are internally displaced in the country, while the UN estimates more than a third of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance. It also comes as the US has frozen most foreign aid, impacting human rights and humanitarian relief in Myanmar.

The epicentre of the earthquake is in central Myanmar, which Freeman describes as the "heartland" of the ongoing conflict in the country.

"There are so many issues already impacting civilians there - military air strikes, clashes between resistance groups and the military and different towns under different control," he says when we speak - adding those, plus the quake, are "going to make delivery of aid all the more complicated".

Freeman says Myanmar’s military has a "well-documented history of denying aid to areas where groups who resist are active" - and calls for the military to "allow unimpeded humanitarian access" to areas that are affected, prioritising "the needs of civilians".

Ben Hatton
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

It's been around six hours now since a powerful earthquake struck Myanmar in South-East Asia.

It was measured as 7.7 magnitude by the US Geological Survey at around noon local time (06:00 GMT) - four smaller shocks ranging between 4.5 and 6.6 in magnitude have been measured in the area since.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is run by a military regime and it can be difficult to get information. We don't yet know the death toll, or the full extent of the damage.

But the BBC's Burmese Service has spoken to a rescue worker in Myanmar's second largest city, Mandalay, who says the damage there is "enormous" and that the number of casualties is "at least in the hundreds". The Red Cross also says there has been "significant damage”.

A state of emergency has been declared in six regions, and images show buildings and roads badly damaged - we've sourced a video showing a large bridge collapsing.

Exactly how far the damage has spread remains unclear - but we have mapped out how far away the earthquake could be felt.

In Thailand, which borders Myanmar to the east, three construction workers have been killed and dozens injured after an unfinished high-rise building collapsed in the capital, Bangkok. Our team in the city said they felt the buildings swaying.

There's still much we don't know, but we have teams on the ground and across the BBC working hard to bring you the latest information.

Three people are now confirmed to have died after the building they were working on in Bangkok collapsed, the Thailand National Institute for Emergency Medicine says.

In an update on Facebook, it adds that 68 others are injured and have been taken to hospital.

Five people are in critical condition, the organisation says.

As we reported a little earlier, 81 construction workers from the site are still trapped under the rubble of the building, according to the country's deputy prime minister.

Rachel Flynn
Live reporter

I've been talking to an English teacher in Bangkok, who describes feeling dizzy and as though she was going to "pass out" when she felt the earthquake tremors in her school's corridors.

Amy Clayton, 26, says she was approaching a colleague when they asked her: "Can you feel that?"

Seconds later, she heard the fire alarms go off, and the school's principal telling everyone to evacuate through the speaker system.

Children were crying with some going on to have panic attacks, she tells me.

"We were completely unprepared. We do all sorts of drills - but never one for earthquakes," she says, with one colleague telling her it's the first quake she's experienced in decades.

Image source, Amy Clayton

We're hearing that Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has now arrived at the scene of a collapsed building in the country's capital, where 81 workers are currently trapped.

Earlier, she spoke to reporters and called for calm after an emergency meeting following the earthquake - which hit Myanmar but was felt in neighbouring countries, including Thailand.

Heavy machinery is also now reported to be arriving at the site of the incident, so rescue workers can begin searching for those trapped under the rubble.

Image source, Napasin Samkaewcham, BBC Thai

BBC Thai journalist Panisa Aemocha has been speaking to people in Thailand outside the scene of a collapsed building (see our last post for more details), which she says is "horrific".

Panisa says there are "lots of very scared people" and that one of the workers she's spoken to - an 18-year-old - recalls the "split moment" in which the building seemed to fall.

Listen to what else she says here:

The number of workers missing at a collapsed construction site of a high-rise building in Thailand's capital Bangkok has now risen to 81, according to the Thai deputy PM.

Earlier, the figure was at 70.

The Thai government says it's coordinating an emergency response at the scene and in a statement online, it says they have ordered the mobilisation of search and rescue teams, and disaster centres have been ordered to prepare relief equipment and machinery.

According to Thailand's Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsuthin, there were as many as 409 people working on the site when it collapsed.

Images show some of the rescue workers who are already there.

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Chris Clayton & Erwan Rivault
BBC Visual Journalism team

Details are continuing to emerge about the extent of the damage caused by the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar, but its effects have been felt hundreds of miles away.

The map below shows how intense the shaking was across the country and into Thailand, China and India.

It’s based on the Moment Magnitude Scale, with strong shaking causing serious damage while moderate shaking will be felt but usually only causes minor damage.

Why verifying clips from Myanmar can be challengingpublished at 11:17 Greenwich Mean Time 28 March

11:17 GMT 28 March

By Matt Murphy

We at BBC Verify are busy searching for footage from the aftermath of this morning's earthquake in Myanmar.

Normally when we’re gathering imagery from natural disaster zones, our team trawls through social media platforms. In this case we’re looking at Facebook, which is especially popular in Myanmar.

But the country is in the midst of a major conflict between the ruling military regime - which took power in a coup in 2021 - and a patchwork rebel alliance.

Since it came to power, and especially since the war began, the government has restricted access to scores of websites and blocked social media outlets. In 2022, the UN condemned what it called the imposition of a "digital dictatorship" by the military.

Some locals use virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass restrictions, but in January the military introduced a new law imposing harsh penalties on people using such services. As such, footage appearing on social media can be limited.

And once BBC Verify does identify clips from Myanmar, it can be hard to confirm they are authentic.

Usually, footage would be cross-referenced with photos from Google Street View, but this service is limited in many parts of the country. In these cases, our team uses older verified videos or satellite imagery which can highlight unique geographical features to authenticate clips.

The humanitarian situation was already bad in Myanmar, now it's a whole lot worsepublished at 11:07 Greenwich Mean Time 28 March

11:07 GMT 28 March

Rebecca Henschke
BBC Eye reporter and former Asia editor

Even before this devastating earthquake hit, the humanitarian situation in Myanmar was dire.

The Sagaing region, near the epicentre of the quake, is a volatile key battleground in the civil war.

It’s a stronghold of pro-democracy resistance groups who are fighting to overthrow the military government that seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021.

The civil war has left more than an estimated 3.5 million people displaced from their homes. And hunger has reached alarming levels. Before the quake, the United Nations was warning that nearly 20 million people - a third of the population - would need aid this year. Now the situation has got a whole lot worse.

A recent BBC data project reveals that there is now a patchwork of groups in control of Sagaing and across Myanmar, and this will make relief and recover efforts challenging.

The data investigation revealed that the military now only has full control of less than a quarter of the country.

Since seizing power in the coup, the Myanmar Miliary have also isolated the country from the outside world. Independent media is effectively banned and international aid groups activities restricted. The cuts in American foreign aid have also severely impacted Myanmar.