YANGON - Torrential tropical downpours lashed Burma's Irrawaddy delta on Friday, deepening the misery of an estimated 2.5 million destitute survivors of Cyclone Nargis and further hampering the military government's aid efforts.
In the storm-struck town of Kunyangon, around 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Yangon, thousands of men, women and children stood in mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication at the occasional passing aid vehicle.Children mobbed any car that stopped, grimy hands reaching through a window in search of bits of bread or a t-shirt.
Despite such scenes and the latest storm, likely to turn already damaged roads to mud, the former Burma's ruling generals insist their relief operations are running smoothly.
However, they issued an edict in state-run newspapers on Friday saying legal action would be taken against anybody found hoarding or selling relief supplies, amid rumours of local military units expropriating trucks of food, blankets and water.
If emergency supplies do not get through in much greater quantities, foreign governments and aid groups say starvation and disease are very real threats.
Some cholera has been confirmed among survivors, but the number was in line with case levels in previous years, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
"We don't have an explosion of cholera," Maureen Birmingham, acting WHO representative in Thailand, told reporters in Bangkok.
Diarrhoea, dysentery and skin infections have afflicted some cyclone refugees crammed into monasteries, schools and other temporary shelters after the devastating May 2 storm.
The WHO, which has sent health kits, bleach and chlorine tablets to treat dirty water, said the peak threat from disease was 10 days to one month after a natural disaster.
EU URGES OPENING UP TO AID
The European Union's top aid official, Louis Michel, met ministers in Yangon on Thursday and urged them to admit foreign aid workers and essential equipment to keep the death toll, which the Red Cross says could be as high as 128,000, from rising.
Burma state television raised its official death toll on Thursday to 43,328. Independent experts say the figures are probably far higher, with British officials saying the number of dead and missing may be 200,000.
Michel, like so many other envoys before, had made little headway so far.
