Myanmar storm’s death toll may top 10,000

NEW DELHI - The government of Myanmar said today that the death toll from a weekend cyclone in the Southeast Asian nation could hit 10,000, with potentially hundreds of thousands of people left homeless, aid agencies reported.

The estimate of 10,000 killed was a sharp escalation from the previous official tally of 351 and was provided in a briefing by the Myanmar government to United Nations agencies, said Stephanie Bunker, the spokeswoman for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least 3,000 people were reported missing from a single district.

Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, on Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph. Particularly hard hit was the fertile, low-lying Irrawaddy River delta, which empties into the Andaman Sea.

Telephone and Internet lines were down, making communication even more difficult in a country whose ruling military junta keeps a tight rein on contact with the outside world. Aid officials said it could be several days or even weeks before an accurate assessment of death and damage could be made.

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been displaced by the disaster, with many residents in the mostly Buddhist nation taking shelter in temple pagodas, said Christine South, Asia-Pacific operations coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

South said by telephone from Geneva that her organization had dispatched five teams to survey the damage - two in the capital, Yangon (also known as Rangoon), and three in the Irrawaddy delta area.

The aid workers were distributing about 4,200 emergency kits with clothing, water purification tablets, tarpaulins and other necessities. The federation also had more relief teams standing by in the region, waiting for a go-ahead from the Myanmar government, South said.

Around the delta, “there have been surge tides, there may be mud flow, there may be potential of rain in coming days,” she said. “This is the rice bowl of Myanmar, so we have to assess the impact on food production in the longer term.”

In Yangon, there were reports of homes with their roofs blown off and windows shattered, and of roads blocked by fallen trees and other debris. Some power lines were down, and construction materials were scarce.

“People are having problems with drinking water,” said Soe Myint, a Burmese political dissident based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, citing information from contacts in Yangon. “Prices of basic commodities have increased.”

The World Food Program said that it had 3,800 tons of food inside Myanmar when the cyclone hit, including rice, beans, salt, oil and other staples. About a quarter of that has already been distributed in Yangon.

“There is a lot of damage, and that’s making it difficult for the teams to get out,” spokeswoman Brenda Barton said in Rome, where the World Food Program is based.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said that the U.S. Embassy in Yangon had authorized an emergency contribution of $250,000 toward relief efforts, but that an American disaster-assistance team had not yet received permission from the Myanmar government to enter the country.

“That is a barrier to us being able to move forward,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

Myint said there was some criticism by residents that Myanmar’s military was slow to mobilize to help citizens deal with the crisis - for example, by clearing roads in residential areas. Last fall, the ruling junta sent troops to quell pro-democracy protests; dozens of people are believed to have been killed in the bloody confrontations that ensued.

Despite the cyclone’s catastrophic effects, it appeared that the government remained intent on going ahead with a referendum this Saturday on Myanmar’s draft constitution. But a government minister told foreign diplomats that balloting might be delayed by “a few days” in the hardest-hit areas, the Associated Press reported.

 henry.chu@latimes.com

 maggie.farley@latimes.com

Chu reported from New Delhi and Farley from the United Nations. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Rome contributed to this report.