Myanmar storm - death toll touched 22,000

Myanmar’s military government raised its death toll on Tuesday from the devastating Cyclone Nargis to just under 22,500 people, state media reported. An additional 41,000 people were missing as a result of the cyclone, which ploughed into the Irrawaddy delta on Saturday, triggering a massive storm surge that swept inland.

“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the devastated former capital, Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low.

“The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages,” he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. “They did not have anywhere to flee.”

It is the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh.

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the military were “doing their best”, but analysts said there could be political fallout for military rulers of the former Burma who pride themselves on their ability to cope with any challenge.

“The myth they have projected about being well-prepared has been totally blown away,” said political analyst Aung Naing Oo, who fled to Thailand after a brutally crushed 1988 uprising. “This could have a tremendous political impact in the long term.”

Earlier, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television that 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 90 km (50 miles) southwest of Yangon.

Reflecting the scale of the disaster, the ruling junta said it would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas of Yangon and the sprawling Irrawaddy delta.

However, state TV said the May 10 vote on the charter, part of the army’s much-criticised “roadmap to democracy”, would proceed as planned in the rest of the southeast Asian nation, which has been under army rule for the last 46 years.

The military’s political plans have been slammed by Western governments, especially after the army’s bloody suppression of Buddhist-monk led protests last September.

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