The Sault Star - Ontario, CA
First major aid flights head to Myanmar
Posted 18 hours ago
Myanmar's isolationist military regime gave the go-ahead for the first major airlift of international aid into the country Thursday, while dragging its feet on urgently requested visas by foreign agencies several days after a devastating cyclone. Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis on Saturday has killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, but a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that more than 100,000 may have perished.
Four aircraft loaded with critically needed food from the U.N. World Food Program were set to land at Yangon airport Thursday morning for rapid delivery to the Irrawaddy delta, where last Saturday's cyclone wreaked the greatest damage, the agency said.
The flights included 45 metric tons of high-energy biscuits.
"It is critical that we reach the hungry and homeless in Myanmar with ready-to-eat food as soon as possible to help them survive this horrific disaster," the UN agency said in a news release from Washington.
As international relief began to trickle in, hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in the swamped delta.
Minutes of a UN aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed that the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.
Only a handful of UN aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being 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. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.
"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 UN Children's Fund said its staff in Myanmar reported seeing many people huddled in roughly built shelters and children who had lost their parents.
"There's widespread devastation. Buildings and health centres 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.