Associated Press
Almost 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for after a devastating cyclone in Myanmar (Burma), a state radio station said Monday.
(See photos of the cyclone damage and watch video.)
Foreign Minister Nyan Win told foreign diplomats at a briefing that the death toll could reach 10,000, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was held behind closed doors.
Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country early Saturday with winds of up to 120 miles an hour (193 kilometers an hour), leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
The government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it Monday to 3,939.
"Cyclone" is the name given to a hurricane when it occurs in the northern Indian Ocean or, as is the case with Cyclone Nargis, the Bay of Bengal (see map). (Get the basics on hurricanes/cyclones.)
Aid Declined?
The radio station broadcasting from the country's new capital, Naypyidaw, said that 2,879 more people are unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River Delta area, where the storm wreaked the most havoc.
"Reports are coming out of the delta coast, particularly the Irrawaddy region, that in some villages up to 95 percent of houses have been destroyed," said Matthew Cochrane at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' Geneva headquarters.
The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.
"Widespread destruction is obviously making it more difficult to get aid to people who need it most," said Michael Annear, regional disaster-management coordinator for the federation.
In Washington, D.C., the U.S. State Department said the U.S. Embassy in Yangon had authorized an emergency contribution of $250,000 to help with relief efforts. But the State Department added that the Myanmar government initially had refused to allow a U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) into the country to assess damage.
