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The tropical cyclone that struck Myanmar at the weekend left thousands of people killed. The latest estimate is 22,500 dead and more than 40,000 still missing, according to some government officials. Rice fields littered with corpses, desperate survivors homeless and with nothing to eat or drink.
According to the United Nations, the disaster ravaged a huge swathe of southwestern Myanmar, affecting 24 million people or nearly half the country’s population.
Foreign Minister Nyan Win said his nation would welcome international aid.
Nyan Win welcomed Thailand’s promise to send emergency food and medicine, saying Myanmar would welcome international aid from other countries.
“We will welcome help like this from other countries, because our people are in difficulty,” he said.
Few outsiders are allowed to work inside the reclusive country, and fewer still have been able to reach the swampy Irrawaddy river delta which was hardest-hit when cyclone Nargis slammed into the coast on Saturday.
Christian relief organisation World Vision, one of the few international agencies allowed to work inside the military-ruled state, said its teams had surveyed the worst-affected regions and witnessed scenes of desperation.
“They saw the dead bodies from the helicopters, so it’s quite overwhelming from that height,” said Kyi Minn, an adviser to World Vision’s office in Myanmar’s main city of Yangon. “Even from that height it’s devastating.”
Kyi Minn likened the impact to the 2004 tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean, killing 220,000 people in a dozen countries but causing little damage in Myanmar.
