05/07/2008
Military helicopters dropped food and bottled water to villagers in the rice-growing Irrawaddy delta, official media reported on Wednesday . More than half of Myanmar's 53 million people live in five worst-hit states, called divisions.
Aid groups and governments, including U.S. President George W. Bush, asked the military to relax their tight grip to allow humanitarian assistance into Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military for 46 years.
In a rare news conference on Tuesday, Information Minister Kyaw Hsan appealed for help, saying "the government needs the cooperation of the people and well-wishers from home and abroad".
The military government said nearly 22,500 people were killed and 41,000 missing in the most devastating cyclone in Asia since 1991 when a storm killed 143,000 in neighbouring Bangladesh.
A doctor in the Irrawaddy delta town of Labutta said villagers had told him thousands died when a series of huge waves slammed into their homes. People clung to trees in a desperate fight for survival.
In one town alone, Bogalay, 10,000 people were killed, the reclusive military government has said in a town-by-town list of casualties and damage.
As the military's relief operations kicked up a gear, state-run Myanmar TV showed footage of bedraggled survivors lining up on banks of mud to be flown by helicopter out of some of the worst-hit villages.
Disease, hunger and thirst now pose a major threat to hundreds of thousands of survivors of Cyclone Nargis, aid agencies said.
They urged Myanmar's military rulers to open the doors to international humanitarian relief as hundreds of thousands are homeless in the swamplands of the delta southwest of the biggest city Yangon, which was also hard hit by last weekend's storm.
Myanmar TV, the main official source for the number of casualties, on Wednesday re-broadcast Tuesday night's news bulletin. The TV station, monitored outside Myanmar, reported 22,464 killed and 41,054 missing.
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