Burma cyclone death toll soars to 4,000

Published on Monday 5 May 2008 14:47

THE death toll in Burma following a ferocious weekend storm has now claimed nearly 4,000 lives and left thousands more missing.

Burmese state radio - broadcasting from the country's capital Naypyitaw - today put the death toll from Saturday's cyclone at 3,939, a sharp increase from yesterday's official figure of 351.

The radio also said that the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis left 2,879 more people unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area.

Hours later the country's Foreign Minister, Nyan Win, told diplomats and aid agency representatives at a hastily called meeting that the death toll could reach 10,000.

Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless and without clean drinking water from the storm, said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in neighbouring Thailand for United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Officials from the military government met today with representatives of international aid agencies to discuss providing assistance. Thailand announced that it would fly some aid in on Tuesday.

The private aid agency World Vision said Burma's government had invited it "to provide assistance in the form of zinc sheets, tents, tarpaulins and medicine".

The group said: "The agency is co-ordinating with authorities to explore an airlift of emergency supplies into the country from one of its global warehouses."

The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

Residents in Rangoon, the country's biggest city and former capital, queued to buy water and hacked their way through trees felled in the cyclone that destroyed thousands of homes and caused widespread power cuts.

Older citizens said they had never seen Rangoon, a city of around 6.5 million, so devastated in their lifetimes.

Some in Rangoon complained that the 400,000-strong military was doing little to help victims after the storm, only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents to cope on their own in most other areas.

Hotels and more affluent families were using private generators but only sparingly, given the soaring price of fuel.

Public transport was almost at a standstill although airlines announced that Rangoon's international airport had reopened for foreign and domestic flights.

Most telephone landlines, mobile phones and Internet connections were down.

State television reported that in the Irrawaddy's Labutta township, 75% of the buildings had collapsed.

Despite the havoc wreaked by Nargis across wide swathes of the south-east Asian nation, the government indicated that a referendum on the country's draft constitution would proceed as planned on Saturday.

Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and squashing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box.