BANGKOK (Agencies)
Save the Children said Tuesday that it expected the death toll from Myanmar's devastating cyclone to reach as high as 50,000, after the government said more than 22,000 people were dead and 41,000 missing.
The aid agency's Bangkok-based spokesman Dan Collinson said the rapidly escalating death toll would rise sharply again in the next few days as victims of Saturday's powerful cyclone were located.
"If at this stage, only four days in, the government are telling us the numbers are already reaching over 20,000 and there are 40,000 people missing, I think it could well go higher," he told AFP. "I wouldn't be surprised if it went as high as 50,000," he said.
Save the Children is one of the few relief agencies allowed to operate in the reclusive country. It said it has already begun distributing food and shelter materials to some 30,000 victims of the disaster.
Save the Children's international staff are attempting to gain access to Myanmar, but by late Tuesday they were one of several agencies awaiting visa approval from the Myanmar authorities.
On Tuesday, state television dramatically raised the death toll from the 15,000 announced hours earlier.
"According to the information as of 12 noon today, 21,793 people were killed and 40,695 were missing in Irrawaddy division, while 671 were killed, 670 were injured and 359 people were missing in Yangon division," it said.
Three other regions of Myanmar were also affected by the cyclone, but state media gave no report on the casualties in those areas.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the rubble-strewn city of five million, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 meters) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
The first batch of more than $10 million worth of foreign aid arrived on Tuesday, but a lack of specialized equipment slowed distribution.
The total left homeless by the 190 km (120 miles) per hour winds and storm surge is in the several hundred thousands, United Nations aid officials say.
In Yangon itself, people queued up for bottled water and there was still no electricity four days after the cyclone hit.
Prices of food, fuel and construction materials have skyrocketed, and most shops have sold out of candles and batteries. An egg costs three times what it did on Friday. |
