Gumleaf
May 6th, 2008, 07:46 PM
06:50 AEST Wed May 7 2008
Burma's military government has raised its death toll from Cyclone Nargis to nearly 22,500 with another 41,000 missing, nearly all of them from a massive storm surge that swept into the Irrawaddy delta.
Of the dead, only 671 were in the former capital, Rangoon, and its outlying districts, state radio said. The rest were all in the vast swamplands of the delta, which was hit by 190 kmh winds and an enormous storm surge.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the rubble-strewn city of five million, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
As many as 10,000 people died in one coastal town alone.
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the government had sufficient stocks of rice despite damage to grain stored in the huge delta, known as the "rice bowl of Asia" 50 years ago when Burma was the world's largest exporter.
But in the delta, even villages that managed to withstand the worst of the winds are running out of food and water.
"There's not much food," one woman at a pineapple stall in Hlaing Tha Yar, an hour's drive west of Rangoon, said.
In Yangon, people lined up for bottled water and there was still no electricity four days after the cyclone hit.
Prices of food, fuel and construction materials have skyrocketed and most shops have sold out of candles and batteries. An egg costs three times what it did on Friday.
The United Nations' World Food Program has begun doling out emergency rice in Rangoon and the first batch of more than $10 million worth of foreign aid arrived from Thailand yesterday, but a lack of specialised equipment slowed distribution.
Despite the magnitude of the disaster — the most devastating cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh — France said the ruling generals were still placing too many conditions on aid.
"The United Nations is asking the Burmese government to open its doors. The Burmese government replies: 'Give us money, we'll distribute it.' We can't accept that," Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told parliament.
In New York, Rashid Khalikov, UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, appealed to Burma to waive visa requirements for UN aid workers trying to get into the country.
"Unfortunately we cannot tell you how many people are in need of assistance," he said. "We just clearly understand that it will probably be in the hundreds of thousands."
The information minister said the military were "doing their best" but analysts said there could be fallout for the former Burma's rulers, who pride themselves on their ability to cope with any challenge.
"The myth they have projected about being well-prepared has been totally blown away," said analyst Aung Naing Oo, who fled to Thailand after a brutally crushed 1988 uprising. "This could have a tremendous political impact in the long term."
US President George W. Bush made a rare personal appeal to the junta to accept US disaster experts who have so far been kept out.
"Our message is to the military rulers," Bush said. "Let the United States come and help you, help the people."
He said he was prepared to make U.S. naval assets available for search and rescue.
The White House later said the United States was committing $3 million through an aid agency to meet the most urgent needs, up from an initial emergency contribution of $250,000.
Rulers at risk?
Reflecting the scale of the crisis, the junta said it would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas of Yangon and the delta.
However, state TV said the May 10 vote on the charter, part of the army's much-criticised "roadmap to democracy," would proceed as planned in the rest of the Southeast Asian nation, which has been under army rule for the last 46 years.
Its political plans have been slammed by Western governments, especially after the bloody suppression of protests in September.
'Massive, terrible'
The disaster drew a rare acceptance of a trickle of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Thailand flew in nine tonnes of food and medicine, the first foreign aid shipment, but a Reuters cameraman on the plane said supplies were unloaded by hand as no forklift trucks were available — a sign the army may lack vital equipment.
Two Indian transport planes are due to fly in today and more are on standby, officials in New Delhi said.
State media have made much of the army's response, showing soldiers manhandling tree trunks or generals climbing into helicopters or greeting homeless storm victims in Buddhist temples.
Aid agency World Vision in Australia said it had been granted special visas to send in personnel to back up 600 staff in the impoverished country.
"This is massive. It is not necessarily quite tsunami level but in terms of impact of millions displaced, thousands dead, it is just terrible," World Vision Australia head Tim Costello said.
Burma's military government has raised its death toll from Cyclone Nargis to nearly 22,500 with another 41,000 missing, nearly all of them from a massive storm surge that swept into the Irrawaddy delta.
Of the dead, only 671 were in the former capital, Rangoon, and its outlying districts, state radio said. The rest were all in the vast swamplands of the delta, which was hit by 190 kmh winds and an enormous storm surge.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the rubble-strewn city of five million, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
As many as 10,000 people died in one coastal town alone.
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the government had sufficient stocks of rice despite damage to grain stored in the huge delta, known as the "rice bowl of Asia" 50 years ago when Burma was the world's largest exporter.
But in the delta, even villages that managed to withstand the worst of the winds are running out of food and water.
"There's not much food," one woman at a pineapple stall in Hlaing Tha Yar, an hour's drive west of Rangoon, said.
In Yangon, people lined up for bottled water and there was still no electricity four days after the cyclone hit.
Prices of food, fuel and construction materials have skyrocketed and most shops have sold out of candles and batteries. An egg costs three times what it did on Friday.
The United Nations' World Food Program has begun doling out emergency rice in Rangoon and the first batch of more than $10 million worth of foreign aid arrived from Thailand yesterday, but a lack of specialised equipment slowed distribution.
Despite the magnitude of the disaster — the most devastating cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh — France said the ruling generals were still placing too many conditions on aid.
"The United Nations is asking the Burmese government to open its doors. The Burmese government replies: 'Give us money, we'll distribute it.' We can't accept that," Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told parliament.
In New York, Rashid Khalikov, UN humanitarian affairs coordinator, appealed to Burma to waive visa requirements for UN aid workers trying to get into the country.
"Unfortunately we cannot tell you how many people are in need of assistance," he said. "We just clearly understand that it will probably be in the hundreds of thousands."
The information minister said the military were "doing their best" but analysts said there could be fallout for the former Burma's rulers, who pride themselves on their ability to cope with any challenge.
"The myth they have projected about being well-prepared has been totally blown away," said analyst Aung Naing Oo, who fled to Thailand after a brutally crushed 1988 uprising. "This could have a tremendous political impact in the long term."
US President George W. Bush made a rare personal appeal to the junta to accept US disaster experts who have so far been kept out.
"Our message is to the military rulers," Bush said. "Let the United States come and help you, help the people."
He said he was prepared to make U.S. naval assets available for search and rescue.
The White House later said the United States was committing $3 million through an aid agency to meet the most urgent needs, up from an initial emergency contribution of $250,000.
Rulers at risk?
Reflecting the scale of the crisis, the junta said it would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas of Yangon and the delta.
However, state TV said the May 10 vote on the charter, part of the army's much-criticised "roadmap to democracy," would proceed as planned in the rest of the Southeast Asian nation, which has been under army rule for the last 46 years.
Its political plans have been slammed by Western governments, especially after the bloody suppression of protests in September.
'Massive, terrible'
The disaster drew a rare acceptance of a trickle of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Thailand flew in nine tonnes of food and medicine, the first foreign aid shipment, but a Reuters cameraman on the plane said supplies were unloaded by hand as no forklift trucks were available — a sign the army may lack vital equipment.
Two Indian transport planes are due to fly in today and more are on standby, officials in New Delhi said.
State media have made much of the army's response, showing soldiers manhandling tree trunks or generals climbing into helicopters or greeting homeless storm victims in Buddhist temples.
Aid agency World Vision in Australia said it had been granted special visas to send in personnel to back up 600 staff in the impoverished country.
"This is massive. It is not necessarily quite tsunami level but in terms of impact of millions displaced, thousands dead, it is just terrible," World Vision Australia head Tim Costello said.