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Relief starts arriving in cyclone-hit Myanmar

Death toll soars past 22,000

AP, AFP, Yangon
The death toll from the cyclone that battered Myanmar last weekend has risen above 22,000 as the first plane-load of aid arrived from Thailand, state radio has reported.
A news broadcast on govern-ment-run radio said Tuesday that 22,464 people have now been confirmed dead from Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the country's heartland and biggest city ofYangon early Saturday.
The broadcast added that thousands more are missing.
Relief efforts for the stricken area, mostly in the low-lying Irrawaddy River delta, have been difficult, in large part because of
the destruction of roads and communications outlets by the storm. The first assistance from overseas arrived Tuesday from neighbour-ingThailand.
Officials had said today that the toll could continue to climb higher than the 14.000 already feared dead from the Southeast Asian nation's devastating cyclone as the international communi ty prepared to rush in aid.
Meanwhile, UN aid agencies waited Tuesday for visas for disaster response teams to travel to cyclone-hit Myanmar Tuesday amid rebukes that an early warning system could have saved lives in the reclusive country
A UN spokeswoman said devastation in Myanmar was equivalent to that suffered after the 2004 tsunami which devastated southeast Asia.
The US president's wife taura Bush accused Myanmar's military rulers of failing to warn people about the cyclone that devastated the country as a massive international aid operation gathered pace yesterday
"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," the US First Lady said at the White House.
The UN disaster reduction agency deplored the absence of an early warning system in Myanmar that it said coula have drastically cut tlie death toll.
"Looking at the number of deaths, it leads us to think that an early wanting system had not been put in place," Brigitte Leoni, spokeswoman for the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, told journalists in Geneva.
In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, state radio reported tnat the government was delaying a constitutional referendum in areas hit hardest.
Myanmar's Information Minister Maj Gen Kyaw Hsan confirmed at a news conference tliat some 4,000 people had died in Yangon and the low-lying Irrawaddy delta region. He added that another 10,000 people could be dead in the delta.
Kyaw said tidal waves killed most of the victims in that region.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted by state-run television as saying that more than 10,000 people had perished in Irrawaddy while a smaller number died in and around Yangon, the country's largest city.
"News and data are still being collected, so there may be many more casualties," he said.
It was not known why the two ministers presented different death tolls.
The World Food Programme, which was preparing to fly in food, added its own grim assessment of the destruction: Up to 1 million people may be homeless, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out
A state television report gave two different numbers 59 and 130 for the dead in what is known as Yangon division. It did not explain the differing tolls.
The country's ruling junta, which has spurned the international community for decades, urgently appealed for foreign aid at a meeting Nyan Win held with diplomats Monday in Yangon.
The UN's emergency relief coordinator said Tuesday the govern-hi'dik Hid ihditiitdd it‘was ready to start accepting international aid.The UN, Red Cross and other aid organisations have been organising supplies in preparation for shipping them to the country.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult
A military transport plane flew from Bangkok to Yangon Tuesday with emergency aid from Thailand while a number of other countries and organisations said they were prepared to follow.
Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, said Yangon's airport is the closest to the region hardest hit
"For those places accessible by land, there will be cars and trucks from those areas to meet at the halfway point with vehicles from Yangon,” he said. "For remote areas, assessment teams and assistance teams will need to go by helicopters and boats."
The delta is riddled with waterways but Horsey said they are not easily accessible, even during normaltimes.
Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 11,600-square-mile (30,000-square-kilometer) area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines less than 5 percent of the country.
But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.
Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"More or less all the landlines are down and it's extremely difficult to get information from cyclone affected areas. But from die reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattcncuand the final death toll may be huge," said Mac Picczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, in a statement.
State radio reported Saturday's vote on a draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 townships around Yangon and seven in tnc Irrawaddy delta, which bore the brunt of the killer storm.
It indicated that in other areas the balloting would proceed as scheduled.
The appeal for assistance was unusual for Myanmar's ruling pener als, who have long been suspicious of the international organisations and have closely controlled their activi ties.
Foreign governments were poised Tuesday to rush aid to the devastated nation.
The United States, which has slapped economic sanctions on the country, said it likewise stood ready. The US Embassy is providing $250,000 in immediate aid from existing emergency fund. But first lady Laura Busn said Monday the US would provide further aid only if one of its own disaster teams is allowed into the country.
The European Commission was providing $3 million in humanitarian aid while the president of neigh bouring China, Hu Jintao, promised $ 1 million in cash and supplies.
The government had apparently taken few efforts to prepare for the storm, which came bearing down on the country from the Bay of Bengal late Friday. Weather warnings broadcast on television would have been largely useless for the worst-hit rural areas where electricity supply is spotty and television a rarity.
"The government misled people," said Thin Thin, a grocery story owner in Yangon. "They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared."
Yangon was without electricity except where gas-fed generators were available and residents lined up to buy candles, which have doubled in price since the storm hit. Most homes were without water, forcing families to stand in long lines for drinking water and bathe in thecity's lakes.
Most telephone landlines appeared to be restored by late Monday, but mobile phones and Internet connections were down.
Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents, including Buddhist monks, to cope on their own in most other areas.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppression of pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.
At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained when the military cracked down on peaceful protests in September led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.