Burma cyclone death toll reaches 4,000 state television
Pastor Dale Morgan
Burma cyclone death toll reaches 4,000 state television*
YANGON (AFP) - - The death toll from the cyclone that hit Myanmar over
the weekend has reached over 4,000, state television said Monday,
warning that thousands more could be dead.
Aid agencies Monday rushed emergency food and water into Myanmar after
the cyclone tore into the southwest of the impoverished nation.
Despite the devastation wreaked by tropical cyclone Nargis, the ruling
junta vowed to press ahead with its controversial referendum this
weekend on a new constitution, which critics say will entrench military
rule.
People of the main city, Yangon, were busy Monday clearing roads blocked
by fallen trees and queuing to collect water from neighbours with
private wells, as supplies were cut by the storm.
"I haven't seen anything like this in my whole life. It will take at
least a month to return to normal," a 70-year-old man told AFP.
Several coastal villages southwest of Yangon were, destroyed according
to a preliminary assessment by the International Federation of the Red
Cross, its spokesman Michael Annear told AFP in Bangkok.
The villages in the Ayeyawaddy (Irrawaddy) delta bore the brunt of
Nargis, which came in from the Bay of Bengal and combined with a sea surge.
State media said nearly 98,000 people were homeless on the delta's Haing
Gyi island alone, which is home to a navy base.
Annear said teams in Myanmar were distributing essential supplies and
would bring in more from Malaysia as soon as possible.
"We're distributing supplies for those who need shelter, plastic
sheeting to cover roofs, water purification tablets, we are currently
procuring 5,000 litres of water, cooking items, bednets, blankets and
clothes for those in most need," he said.
"We went out as soon as possible but there were problems with mobility
due to a lot of debris and power lines down. Authorities and the local
community have been clearing the road networks so mobility has increased
today."
Hundreds of monks joined in efforts by residents, police and troops to
clear blocked roads.
"The government should do more and we need emergency assistance. Water
is the main need for us. I haven't taken a bath for three days," a taxi
driver told AFP.
Annear said it would take days to get a full picture of the extent of
the devastation.
The military government said Saturday's referendum on a new constitution
intended to usher in democracy would go ahead, but with food prices
tripling and water supplies cut, residents said they had more pressing
problems.
"We don't want any democracy, we just want water now," a 30-year-old man
said as he queued at a neighbour's well.
But the junta, based in the remote new capital of Naypyidaw, insisted
"the entire people of the country are eagerly looking forward" to the
referendum, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.
The generals say it will pave the way for multiparty elections in 2010,
but opponents say the charter will entrench military rule.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house in Yangon, were she is under
house arrest, was damaged but the Nobel peace laureate was unhurt, a
Myanmar official told AFP.
"Her house was also hit a little but she is safe," the official said.
Meanwhile United Nations agencies and international charities were
meeting at the UN's Bangkok headquarters to coordinate their response to
the disaster, Terje Skavdal, head of the UN Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP.
He said Myanmar's national Red Cross was the only agency able to
commence damage assessment Sunday, but other agencies had now started
their own.
The country's infrastructure has been run into the ground by decades of
mismanagement by the military, which has ruled since 1962. Myanmar has
also suffered more than a decade of US and European sanctions over the
continuing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Sanctions were tightened after the junta's crackdown on mass protests
last September left 31 people dead, according to UN figures.