Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma's Irrawaddy delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine as aid groups said thousands more people will die if emergency supplies do not get through soon.
Buddhist temples and high schools in towns on the outskirts of Cyclone Nargis's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centers for some of the 1.5 million people left clinging to survival.
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| People gather to receive free rice from the government after cyclone Nargis hit Burma, in the outskirts of Rangoon on Saturday. (Photo: AP) |
The reclusive military government is reluctantly accepting aid from the outside world, including the United Nations, but has made it very clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid as quickly as possible into the inundated delta.
"Unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy on an unimaginable scale," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue Committee.
In the delta town of Laputta, where 80 percent of homes were destroyed, the authorities were providing just one cup of rice per family per day, a European Commission aid official told Reuters.
The scenes are the same across the delta, where as many as 100,000 people are feared dead in the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh.
"We have 900 people here, but we only have 300 lunch boxes. We gave it to the women and children first. The men still have not had any food," said a woman at a relief centre in the town of Myaung Mya, 100 km (60 miles) west of Rangoon.
"More are arriving every day," she said.
The UN appealed for $187 million in aid, even though it is still not confident the food, water and tents flown in will make it to those most in need because of the junta's reluctance to admit international relief workers.
Burma's state media says 23,350 people have died and 37,019 are missing after Cyclone Nargis roared up the Irrawaddy delta the night of May 2 whipping up a wall of seawater that flattened everything in its path.
Health experts warned that a "second disaster" was looming from diseases such as diarrhea and malaria, even if survivors do manage to find food and shelter.
State-run TV warned of "foreign interference" in a repeatedly broadcast message on Saturday urging people to vote “Yes” for the constitution.
Most people probably did just that. Of the 20 people Reuters interviewed near polling stations in Hlegu Township in Rangoon Division on Saturday, only two admitted to voting “No.” Even then it was in a whisper and with a nervous glance over the shoulder.
