China View 2008-05-05
BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.N. official said Monday that hundreds of thousands have no drinking or shelter in Myanmar after a cyclone devastated the nation's Irrawaddy delta region.
"We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know," Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, Myanmar's government and foreign aid workers struggled to assess the damage from the devastating cyclone that killed more than 350 people. The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities slowly make contact with islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl of the former Burma.
"The government is having as much trouble as anyone else in getting a full overview. Roads are not accessible and many small villages were hit and will take time to reach," Terje Skavdal, regional head of the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told Reuters in Bangkok.
In Yangon, many roofs were ripped off even sturdy buildings, suggesting damage would be severe in the shanty towns that lie on the outskirts of the city of 5 million people. State television was still off the air in Yangon and clean water was becoming scarce. Most shops had sold out of candles and batteries and there was no word when power would be restored.
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 Only one in four buildings were left standing in Laputta and Kyaik Lat, two towns deep in the rice-producing region.
The United Nations disaster experts were meeting in the capital of neighboring Thailand, to assess the prospects for an international relief effort.
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