Myanmar’s cyclone death toll soars above 133,000

YANGON, Saturday (Reuters) - Myanmar's junta took diplomats on a tour of the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy delta today as the toll of dead and missing from Cyclone Nargis soared above 133,000 people, making it one of the most devastating ever to hit Asia.

In the last 50 years, only two Asian cyclones have exceeded Nargis in terms of human cost -- a 1970 storm that killed 500,000 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, and another that killed 143,000 in 1991, also in Bangladesh. However, with an estimated 2.5 million people clinging to survival in the delta, and the military government refusing to admit large-scale outside relief, disaster experts say Nargis' body count could yet rise dramatically.

British officials say the actual toll may already be more than 200,000. The military, which has ruled unchecked for the last 46 years, insists it is capable of handling aid distribution, seemingly out of fear an influx of helping foreigners might loosen its vice-like grip on power.

With heavy tropical downpours continuing to hamper the aid effort today, the generals took Yangon-based diplomats into the delta to see the army's relief operations, although it was expected to be a stage-managed and highly sanitised trip. One envoy who went on a similar tour of a storm-hit district of Yangon, the former capital, described the neat rows of tents on display as “happy camps”.

In the delta, the junta will have to work much harder to keep the diplomats away from the destitute. Near the town of Kunyangon this week, columns of men, women and children stretched for miles alongside the road, begging in the mud and rain for scraps of food or clothing from the occasional passing aid vehicle.

Many storm refugees are crammed into monasteries and schools and are being fed and watered by local volunteers and private donors who have taken matters into their own hands, sending in trucks laden with clothes, biscuits, dried noodles and rice.

Buddhist monks play a major role.“We have distributed over 100 tonnes of rice and more than 3,000 tin roofing sheets so far. We are trying to distribute more,” said the Venerable Nyanissara.

He oversees a makeshift relief centre in the town of Kunthechaung where one by one, maroon-robed monks put up their hands before coming forward to accept carefully measured quotas of food for their storm-hit home villages.

Given the monks' unquestioned moral authority in the devoutly Buddhist southeast Asian nation, private donors are happy to see the shaven-headed men taking charge of goods brought down to the delta in rickety trucks, vans and boats. The generals are admitting aid flights to Yangon, including around four a day from the United States, their arch enemy.

But aid agencies say only a fraction of needed relief gets to the inundated part of the delta, an area the size of Austria, and more lives are at risk unless the situation improves.

In a rare sign of agreement with international aid agencies, the junta sharply raised its toll from the May 2 disaster on Friday night to 77,738 dead and another 55,917 missing. The news came on state TV, which has mainly shown footage of generals handing out food at the model tented villages.

People in Myanmar are snapping up bootleg video discs of bloated corpses, desperate refugees and ravaged villages to get a fuller picture of the situation.“Myanmar television is useless,” said a Yangon businessman who bought the underground VCDs to see the raw, uncensored version of the storm that killed his brother in Labutta, one of the hardest-hit towns in the Irrawaddy delta.

Given the junta's virtual ban on foreign journalists and restrictions on aid workers, independent assessment is difficult. As international frustration mounts, envoys have been flying in to try to coax the generals out of their deep distrust of the outside world.

The latest is the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, expected to arrive in Yangon on Sunday. A spokeswoman said Holmes will carry a third letter from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to junta supremo Than Shwe, who has repeatedly ignored Ban's requests for a conversation.