Bangladesh delivers aid, slowly, to storm survivors

MISSIONBARIA, Bangladesh - Keramat Ullah was among dozens of people lined up on a Bangladeshi riverbank on Wednesday who received their first supplies of rice, medicines and a blanket, two weeks after a cyclone destroyed their homes.

"We have been coming here every day, thinking that a boat will bring food," the elderly farmer said in Barguna district, one of the areas badly hit by the November 15 cyclone.

Volunteers from Concern, a foreign non-government organisation, finally showed up on Wednesday with food and medicines that were quickly disbursed among the hundreds massed on the riverbank.

"There are too many for us to be able to satisfy," said a volunteer, pointing to survivors scrambling for relief packets.

Relief supplies and aid pledges have poured into the impoverished country from around the globe, but help has been slow in reaching survivors, partly because many are in remote areas.

U.S. military helicopters and Bangladesh air force planes have dropped food, water and medicine to tens of thousands of people along the country's devastated coast, but survivors remain at risk from disease and malnutrition.

Reporters travelling through the affected areas said the queues of people awaiting relief supplies grew longer each day. Thousands of families made homeless by the cyclone squatted on the highway, some under makeshift shelters.

DEVASTATION

Flattened homes, crumpled crop fields and uprooted trees in villages along the southern coast are a stark reminder of the devastation wrought by Cylone Sidr.

Nearly 3,500 people were killed.

It was the worst disaster in the low-lying country since 1991, when a cyclone and storm surge killed about 143,000 people.

Many villages are deserted. In some others people sit by rows of newly dug graves grieving for loved ones lost to the storm.

Many young wives of fishermen are still waiting for their husbands to come back from sea.

"I don't believe he has died," said Aklima Begum, 24, as she sat on the Bishkhali river bank with her 3-year-old daughter nearby. "God cannot be so cruel to make my children fatherless."

Since the storm struck, there has been no electricity in Barguna district town, about 270 km (168 miles) from the capital Dhaka, and the local hospital operates by candlelight.

The streets are crammed with rickshaws with lanterns. "This can only be called a ghost city," said Sanjeeb Das, a local reporter.

Britain announced on Wednesday a further $4 million (1.9 million pounds) for emergency relief for the cyclone victims. Earlier, the U.K. pledged $10 million.

A fresh shipment of U.S. humanitarian relief supplies arrived in Dhaka on Wednesday. But distribution of relief goods still has coordination problems.

"Some people are getting supplies twice or more while others are getting nothing," said village chief Mohammad Shajahan at Patharghata.

"We heard that Americans have come and they will give us plenty ... but where are they? said 60-year-old villager Abdul Hannan Mollah.