A cyclone killed more than 350 people in military-ruled Burma, ripping through Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta where it flattened at least two towns, officials and state media said on Sunday.
The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities manage to contact outlying islands and villages that felt the full force of Cyclone Nagris, a Category 3 storm packing winds of 190 km (120 miles) per hour when it hit early on Saturday.
State television, which was still off air in Yangon more than 36 hours after Nagris slammed into the city of 5 million, reported 20,000 homes destroyed on one island alone, a government official in the remote capital, Naypyidaw, said.
The island, Haingyi, is around 200 km southwest of Yangon on the western fringes of the Irrawaddy delta.
Nagris, which had been gathering steam in the Bay of Bengal for several days, devastated the former Burma's leafy main city, littering the streets with overturned cars, fallen trees and debris from battered buildings.
"Utter war zone," one diplomat said in an email to Reuters in Bangkok. "Trees across all streets. Utility poles down. Hospitals devastated. Clean water scarce."
Earlier, state media said 19 people had been killed in Yangon and 222 in the delta, where weather forecasters had predicted a storm surge of as much as 12 feet (3.5 metres)
Official newspapers said only one in four buildings were left standing in Laputta and Kyaik Lat, two towns deep in the rice-producing region. There were no details of casualties.
In Yangon, many roofs were ripped off even sturdy buildings, suggesting damage would be severe in the shanty towns that lie on its outskirts.
Foreign aid workers, their movements restricted by the ruling military junta, struggled to reach many impoverished areas to assess the impact.
"I have never seen anything like it," one retired government worker told Reuters. "It reminded me of when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States."
FOOD PRICES DOUBLE
