US envoy says toll from Myanmar cyclone might reach 100,000
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar’s swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a top U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a devastating cyclone could top 100,000.
The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta’s visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.
Only a handful of U.N. 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.
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