YANGON: The death toll from the Myanmar cyclone could hit 100,000, the top US diplomat in the country said on Wednesday, as thousands of shell-shocked survivors emerged from the flood waters, desperate for food. The dramatic warning came as global pressure mounted on Myanmar's ruling generals to open up to foreign aid, with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon describing the situation as a "critical moment for the people of Myanmar."
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the country once known as Burma was facing a "major catastrophe", urging the junta to facilitate the arrival of disaster relief teams and the distribution of badly-needed emergency supplies.
An AFP reporter who reached the town of Labutta in the remote southern Irrawaddy delta hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, which officially left more than 60,000 dead or missing, said there was virtually no food or fresh water left.
"There may well be over 100,000 deaths in the delta area," Shari Villarosa, the US charge d'affaires in Yangon, told reporters in a conference call, citing a non-governmental organisation she would not name.
"It is an estimate of what deaths may actually reach, primarily in the delta area," Villarosa told reporters in Washington, adding that "95 percent of the buildings have disappeared" in the delta, citing a Myanmar government source.
In the devastated town of Labutta, witnesses said survivors spent days picking through murky water strewn with the festering and bloated dead, desperate for shelter, food, water and medical care.
"They have lost their families, they have nowhere to stay and they have nothing to eat," one witness told AFP.
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy said survivors were in "urgent need" of foreign assistance, but the White House said the secretive generals still had not responded to its offers of help.
Holmes said a World Food Programme plane was expected to arrive in Myanmar early Thursday - five days after the cyclone washed away entire villages in one of the world's poorest nations.
Witnesses said Saturday's storm, packing winds of 190 kilometres per hour, had left the region submerged under six-metre waters higher than the tree-tops - and left countless corpses rotting in the tropical heat.
Aid workers for Doctors without Borders reported that the cyclone had destroyed 80 percent of buildings in the worst-hit parts of Myanmar.
After days of criticism aimed at the generals who have ruled Myanmar for nearly half a century - and who have hesitated to let in foreign relief workers - aid began trickling into the country.
Apart from the WFP plane, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said another flight would leave at the end of the week from southern Italy, with 25 tonnes aid and several staff on board.
OCHA said the WFP had already been able to distribute some food aid in Yangon, and aid has also arrived from Thailand and China.
But the UN refugee agency said 22 tonnes of supplies were stuck at the border with Thailand, awaiting the junta's approval to enter Myanmar.
The military, best known internationally for its long detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, had insisted that experts well versed in coping with catastrophes around the globe would not be automatically allowed in.
But after criticism of a government that declined help from abroad after the 2004 Asian tsunami, and bitter complaints that time was running out for those still alive, the generals seemed to be slowly relenting.
"We're moving in the right direction... we are making progress," Holmes told reporters at UN headquarters in New York, welcoming the appointment of a cabinet-level minister to handle visa requests from aid organisations.
White House spokesman Dana Perino told reporters: "We are increasingly concerned about the desperate situation that many people are facing there after the cyclone and we stand ready to help."
One local doctor warned that many were suffering from diarrhoea because of the miserable sanitary conditions, saying: "We need emergency rescuers."
Residents told AFP that the regime - which controls all media and stifles the merest whiff of dissent - had not yet set up emergency shelters here, and that even a government rescue ship was stranded after running out of fuel.
"Assistance hasn't reached them yet and they are dying," said Andrew Kirkwood of Save the Children, one of the few aid agencies allowed to operate inside Myanmar.
"And clearly there are millions of homeless," he said. "But how many millions, we don't know."
The charity said an estimated 40 percent of the dead or missing are believed to be children.
The UN's Holmes said a flash appeal to donors for aid to the cyclone victims would be issued on Friday. - AFP/de
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