Hundreds of thousands of people have been left without shelter and drinking water in military-ruled Burma after a devastating cyclone tore through the Irrawaddy delta, a United Nations official said on Monday.
Aid agencies scrambled to deliver plastic sheeting, water and cooking equipment from stockpiles in the former Burma. The government says at least 351 died in the cyclone, which slammed into the delta region on Saturday before devastating Yangon.
That death toll is likely to climb as the authorities make contact with hard-hit islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation of 53 million.
"It's clear that this is a major disaster," Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok, told Reuters after an emergency aid meeting.
"How many people are affected? We know that it's in the six figures. We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know," he said.
The International Federation of the Red Cross said teams were trying to assess the damage and aid requirements in the five declared disaster zones where 24 million people live.
"We are issuing water purification tablets, clothing, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and hygiene items. We're trying to mobilise portable water from local businesses," Michael Annear, head of Red Cross Southeast Asia disaster management unit.
"We're preparing to send more stuff into the country. We have not been restricted," he said.
A new policy imposed on foreign aid agencies in 2006 requires travel permits and official escorts for field trips. It also tightened rules on the transport of supplies and materials.
"That is the existing situation for international staff. The way most agencies work is they use national staff who have more freedom to move," Terje Skavdal, regional head of the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said.
"We will have a dialogue with the government to try to get access to the people affected."
It is not know whether Myanmar, the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, will need to import emergency rice supplies. If it does, it is likely to inflate yet further the already sky-high prices of the staple.
The World Food Programme says it has stocks of around 500,000 tonnes inside the country, but not near Yangon.
CLEAN-UP BEGINS
