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Agencies rush emergency aid to Myanmar cyclone
victims
Yangon— Aid agencies rushed emergency food and water
into Myanmar on Monday after a cyclone tore into the impoverished
nation, killing more than 350 people and leaving hundreds of
thousands homeless.
Despite the devastation wreaked by tropical cylone Nargis, the
ruling junta vowed to press ahead with its controversial referendum
this weekend on a new constitution, which critics say will entrench
military rule.
Nargis left at least 351 dead after making landfall in southwestern
Myanmar at the weekend, packing winds of 190 kilometres (120 miles)
per hour, wrecking thousands of buildings and knocking out power
lines, state media reported. People of the main city, Yangon, were
busy Monday clearing roads blocked by fallen trees and queuing to
collect water from neighbours with private wells, as supplies were
cut by the storm.
“I haven’t seen anything like this in my whole life. It will take at
least a month to return to normal,” a 70-year-old man told AFP.
Several coastal villages southwest of Yangon were destroyed,
according to a preliminary assessment by the International
Federation of the Red Cross, its spokesman Michael Annear told AFP
in Bangkok.The villages in the Ayeyawaddy (Irrawaddy) delta bore the
brunt of Nargis, which came in from the Bay of Bengal and combined
with a sea surge.
State media said nearly 98,000 people were homeless on the delta’s
Haing Gyi island alone, which is home to a navy base. Richard Horsey,
a UN official in Bangkok, said that several hundreds of thousands of
people had been left homeless and without drinking water.
“If we look at the emergency needs for shelter and drinking water,
there are several hundred thousand people who will need urgent
assistance,” he told AFP.
UN agencies and other international aid groups met Monday in Bangkok
to begin coordinating a response, and Annear said Red Cross teams in
Myanmar were already distributing essential supplies.
“We’re distributing supplies for those who need shelter, plastic
sheeting to cover roofs, water purification tablets, we are
currently procuring 5,000 litres of water, cooking items, bednets,
blankets and clothes for those in most need,” he said.—AFP
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