It’s been an active year globally for significant earthquakes and the latest hit last night.

A strong quake struck northern Myanmar collapsing a bridge and a gold mine, damaging several old Buddhist pagodas and leaving as many as 12 people feared dead.

No casualties or major damage were reported in the nearest major population center, Myanmar’s second-biggest city of Mandalay, about 117 kilometres south of the quake’s epicenter near the town of Shwebo.

Smaller towns closer to the quake’s epicenter were worse-hit.

An official from Myanmar’s Meteorological Department said the magnitude-6.8 quake struck at 7:42 a.m. local time.

The area surrounding the epicenter is underdeveloped, and casualty reports were coming in piecemeal, mostly from local media. Myanmar has a poor official disaster response system, despite having lost upwards of 140,000 people to a devastating cyclone in 2008.

The region is a center for mining of minerals and gemstones, and several mines were reported to have collapsed.

The biggest single death toll was reported by a local administrative officer in Sintku township – on the Irrawaddy River near the quake’s epicenter – and said that six people had died there and another 11 were injured.

WW & TWC