Myanmar toll may reach 100,000

Carly Petesch and Lily Hindy

Associated press writers

People swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar’s swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a cyclone could top 100,000.

The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta’s visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.

Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta’s permission to deliver it.

Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday’s storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead.

“I don’t know what happened to my wife and young children,” said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.

A spokesman for the U.N. Children’s Fund said its staff in Myanmar reported seeing many people huddled in rude shelters and children who had lost their parents.

“There’s widespread devastation. Buildings and health centers are flattened and bloated dead animals are floating around, which is an alarm for spreading disease. These are massive and horrific scenes,” Patrick McCormick said at UNICEF offices in New York

AP Photo

Workers pour rice into bags to be loaded on to a truck for distribution in Yangon, Myanmar, Wednesday, May 7, 2008. Cyclone victims in Myanmar’s biggest city faced new challenges Wednesday as markets doubled prices of rice, charcoal and bottled water.