Yangon - Cyclone Nargis, which smashed into central Myanmar
over the weekend, has left almost 4,000 dead with another 3,000
missing, and hundreds-of-thousands homeless, state-run media and aid
workers said Monday.
At least 3,930 died in the disaster and another 2,879 were still
listed as missing by Monday, a state-run Myanmar radio station said
in an evening broadcast.
It is likely the death toll will continue to rise as reports of
the catastrophe filter in from Myanmar's devastated countryside in
the central region, that took the brunt of the storm.
Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and without
basic utilities by the cyclone, which blew off the Bay of Bengal late
Friday, packing winds of up to 200 kilometres per hour, wrecking much
of the country's already fragile infrastructure and threatening its
precarious food supply.
Yangon, Myanmar's former capital and the country's commercial hub,
was among the places hardest hit by the storm, which uprooted trees,
toppled electricity and telephone poles, and burst water pipes,
leaving the city of several million without basic utilities.
In Bangkok, United Nations agencies and other international aid
organizations met Monday to prepare for emergency disaster relief for
the country, although Myanmar's military leaders had yet to give the
green light for such an operation.
'That's basically a limitation, but the government has at least
not said no,' said Terje Skavdal, regional director of the UN Office
for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), who headed the
Bangkok meeting.
Myanmar's government-controlled prime time evening news showed
Prime Minister General Thein Sein visiting trouble spots in Yangon,
along with other generals, but providing no details of the extent of
the natural disaster.
While there are already several UN offices in Myanmar, they are
small and not up to handling such a human catastrophe.
'It's too early to provide an accurate assessment but we're
speaking about hundreds of thousands of homeless,' Skavdal said. 'The
UN support system is not sufficient inside Myanmar.'
There are doubts that the military would welcome international aid
at this juncture, as it is gearing up to stage a national referendum
on Saturday to vote on a draft constitution that promises to
legitimize the military's dominant role in Myanmar's future politics.
'I think they are too proud to call for international aid,' said
Jens Orback, a former Swedish minister for democracy and gender
equality who was in Yangon at the weekend to assess preparations for
the referendum when he got caught in the cyclone.
'I think that now, the generals want to show that they can put the
country in order again without international help,' Orback said in
Bangkok.
Despite the disaster wrought by the cyclone, state media reports
on Monday confirmed that Myanmar's military regime intended to go
ahead with a referendum on May 10.
'The referendum is only a few days away, and the people are
eagerly looking forward to voting,' a government statement carried by
state-run media said.
The storm's devastation has raised questions about the propriety
of the government's referendum plans.
'Yangon ... is without electricity and without water, so I don't
see how you can conduct a referendum under those conditions,' one
Yangon-based Western diplomat said.
'It's a catastrophe,' he added. 'Almost all the electricity poles
were blown down. It will take weeks to repair.'
The Irrawaddy Division, Myanmar's traditional rice bowl, was among
the regions hardest hit by Nargis although details about its effects
there remained sketchy.
Myanmar's third most populous city of Pathein, the Irrawaddy
capital, was reportedly inundated by floodwaters, causing untold
damage and deaths.
The fertile, low-lying division is Myanmar's chief rice-growing
area.
'The rice was high,' a Western diplomat said. 'This will certainly
affect the rice crop negatively.'
The disaster has already caused sharp rises Monday in fuel and
food prices in Yangon.
A bottle of water was selling for 1,000 kyat, compared with 350
kyats last week, while the minimum bus fare had jumped from 50 kyats
to 500 kyats in the city, a Yangon resident said.
Last week's black-market rate for the kyat was 1,120 to the
dollar.
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