5,000 sq km still under water

About 5,000 square kilometres of Burma’s cyclone-hit regions remain under water, with more than a million people in need of emergency relief, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.

“We’re talking about 5,000 square kilometres under water,” said Mr Richard Horsey, a Bangkok-based spokesman with the United Nations office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The bottle-neck (in aid) is getting it out in the delta.

That needs boats, helicopters, trucks... There are upward of one million people in need of help,” he added.

Mr Horsey said there was a shortage of boats in the worst-hit areas of the lowlying Irrawaddy delta, with many vessels destroyed in the storm.

Without immediate assistance, the death toll — officially at nearly 22,000 with about 42,000 missing — would climb.

“We’re dealing with a situation where there could be a second round, where people start dying from water-borne diseases,” he told AFP.

“There are thousands of bodies floating around in the water,” he said, adding that they posed a grave health risk to the survivors.

Both France and the US have ships ready to deliver supplies after the devastating cyclone, but are awaiting the green light from Myanmar’s reclusive military, which appears reluctant to let in outside help.

A United Nation plane is currently in Brindisi in southern Italy waiting to fly to Yangon, while the UN refugee agency has 22 tonnes of aid poised on the Myanmar border, waiting for the go-ahead from the government.

Toll 22,000, 41,000 still missing

More than 22,000 people were killed in Myanmar’s devastating cyclone and 41,000 are still missing four days after the storm slammed into the country’s southern coast, the government said on Tuesday.

Aid workers were racing to deliver food and water to the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta region, which was submerged by floodwater, leaving scenes of utter devastation and desperate homeless survivors running low on food and water.

Witnesses described rice fields littered with corpses and there were fears the official toll could rise still further after jumping by 7,000 on Tuesday.

The US President, Mr George W. Bush, urged Myanmar’s reclusive military rulers to let international help in, saying he was prepared to send navy ships to help the recovery.

But Myanmar’s junta insisted foreign aid experts would have to negotiate with the government to be allowed into the isolated nation.

The government also said it would proceed this weekend with a constitutional referendum as part of its slow-moving “road map” to democracy, except in the areas hardest hit by the disaster.

In its first news conference since tropical cyclone Nargis barrelled into the Irrawaddy river delta early Saturday, the government said a 12-foot (3.5-metre) tidal wave killed many people.

State television said 21,793 people were killed and 40,695 were missing in Irrawaddy division, while 671 were killed and 359 people were missing in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city. Most of the town of Bogalay had also been washed away.