MORE than 100,000 may have died in the cyclone that hit Burma, diplomats warned last night, as British aid agencies, launched an "urgent" appeal to help the victims.
The Disasters Emergency Committee, whose 13 members include the Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam and Save the Children, said the money would be spent on both immediate relief and long-term reconstruction.
The humanitarian crisis is on a scale not seen since the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, which killed at least 225,000 people.
Speaking in Rangoon last night, Shari Villarosa, the chargé d'affaires at the United States embassy in Burma, said: "The information that we're receiving indicates that there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the (Irrawaddy river] delta area."
Burma's military government has said nearly 23,000 people are dead and 41,000 missing after Saturday's cyclone. Among the missing are 17 British nationals who were either visiting the country or live there and have failed to make contact with friends or family in the UK, according to the Foreign Office in London
John Holmes, the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said "We have no means of independently verifying those figures. It would not surprise me if they continued to rise, and maybe rise very significantly, in the future."
A UN World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman in neighbouring Thailand said today that the organisation have prepared four planes carrying international aid. The spokesman said WFP was in "constant touch" with the military junta to obtain flight clearance for the flights but that there have been delays seeking visas for agency personnel. A handful of smaller shipments from neighbouring countries arrived earlier in the week.
Yesterday, little relief had reached people in the worst-hit western region, even as corpses drifted in salty floodwaters after a disaster that left an estimated one million homeless.
A few shops opened in the delta area, but, according to the UN World Food Programme, these were stormed by people. "Fistfights are breaking out," a spokesman said.
The cyclone almost totally destroyed some villages and vast rice-growing areas were wiped out in the delta, which is considered Burma's rice bowl.
Andrew Kirkwood, the head of the Save the Children aid group in Rangoon, said: "The most urgent need is food and water. Many people are getting sick. The whole place is under salt water and there is nothing to drink. They can't use tablets to purify salt water."
The group distributed food, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and chlorine tablets to 230,000 people in the Rangoon area, he said. Lorries were sent to the delta carrying rice, salt, sugar and tarpaulins.
A Rangoon man back home from the delta area said people had been drinking coconut water because of a lack of safe drinking water.
He said many people were on boats, using blankets as sails. Local aid groups were distributing rice porridge, which people were receiving in dirty plastic shopping bags because all their kitchenware was lost, he said.
Experts say Burma's ruling military must overcome their distrust of the outside world and open up to a full-scale international relief operation. The UN recognised in 2005 the concept of "responsibility to protect" civilians when their governments could not, or would not, do so, even if this meant intervention that violated national sovereignty.
Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, confirmed yesterday that the use of this clause was being considered.
In Rangoon, which was also badly hit, many angry residents said they were given vague and incorrect information about the approaching storm and no instructions on how to cope. .
At a market in Kyimyindaing suburb, a fishmonger called: "Come, come, the fish is very fresh." An angry woman snapped: "Even if the fish is fresh, I have no water to cook it."
Electricity was restored in a small portion of Rangoon, but most residents, who rely on wells with electric pumps, had no water. Vendors sold bottled water at more than double the normal price. The prices of rice and cooking oil also doubled.
Britain has pledged £5 million in aid and the US £1.5 million.
The cyclone in Burma came a week before a referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the junta. State radio said Saturday's vote would be delayed until 24 May in some affected townships. But it would proceed as scheduled in other parts.
CHARITIES MOBILISED DESPITE a frustrating lack of co-operation from the ruling military junta, Save the Children is among the charities working in all the worst-hit areas.
It is distributing food and items, including plastic sheeting, to those hit hardest by the disaster.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), whose other members include World Vision, British Red Cross, Christian Aid and Oxfam, said donations from the UK would be spent on immediate relief and long-term reconstruction.
DEC chief executive Brendan Gormley said: "Our members are there and need the UK public to show huge generosity to help them reach those thousands of people who have seen their lives and livelihoods uprooted by this disaster."
A TV advert asking for donations will be broadcast today. The worst-hit areas are in the Irrawaddy Delta, the region where UN officials have declared a "major, major disaster".
Donations can be made via the DEC website.
Town where survivors dress in dead men's clothes
FOREIGN STAFF SOME survivors came in half-naked. Others with clothes they had taken off the dead.
The rice-trading town of Labutta in the Irrawaddy Delta – the only piece of high ground in a vast watery area – has become a haven for thousands of people who lived through the furious cyclone last weekend, most losing homes and loved ones.
Hope is in as short supply as food, clean water and medical supplies as the possibility of missing relatives turning up diminishes each day.
Crowds of desperate people keep watch at the town's jetty, bestirring themselves when the occasional rescue boat comes in from one of the 51 surrounding towns, most now submerged.
The boats, about 15 feet long, can carry about 30 people, and are usually filled to overflowing. But each day there are fewer and fewer boats, partly because fuel supplies are disappearing.
It has been a journey from horror to misery for most.
Many at the jetty were shaking and had trouble telling their tales. Some were angry, others hysterical. "The wind came first, and the waves started to roll over us, so that we had to crawl over the thatch walls to get to the upper floor of the house. I saw people drowning and dead bodies floating," said a woman in her fifties.
"The water kept rising. We didn't expect it to get so high," one man said.
"I am the only survivor of a family of 11. The entire village was wiped out," said another.
"I was hanging off an 18-foot-high coconut tree for a long time until the weather subsided. I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55.
It was impossible to compile an accurate figure for the number of casualties. Survivors generally indicated that roughly two-thirds of the people in their villages had perished.
However, one village headman said only 100 of 500 people had survived where he lived.
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