UN Halts Aid to Myanmar After Junta Seizes Supplies

Myanmar allowed the first major international aid shipment Thursday — four U.N. planes carrying high-energy biscuits, including one which was apparently turned back. On Friday, state-owned television showed a cargo plane from Italy with water containers, food and plastic sheets at Yangon international airport.

It is not clear how much of the aid is reaching the Irrawaddy delta. The U.N. estimates 1.5 million people have been "severely affected" and voiced "significant concern" about the disposal of dead bodies.

A Norway-based opposition news network, the Democratic Voice of Burma, provided graphic details of misery. In the village of Kongyangon, someone had written in Burmese, "We are all in trouble. Please come help us" on black asphalt, a video from the opposition group showed. A few feet away was another plea: "We're hungry," the words too small to be seen by air rescuers.

According to state media, 22,997 people died and 42,019 are missing from Cyclone Nargis, which hit the country's Irrawaddy delta on Saturday. Shari Villarosa, who heads the United States Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because of illnesses.

Grim assessments about what lies ahead continued: The aid group Action Against Hunger noted that the delta region is known as the country's granary, and the cyclone hit before the harvest.

"If the harvest has been destroyed this will have a devastating impact on food security in Myanmar," the group said.

Anders Ladegaard, secretary-general of the Danish Red Cross, called the relief operation "a nightmare."

"There are problems to the aid inside (Myanmar) and there are problems to get the aid out to the delta area. There are almost no boats and no helicopters," Ladegaard said by satellite telephone to Danish broadcaster DR.

In Yangon itself, the price of increasingly scarce water shot up by more than 500 percent, and rice and oil jumped by 60 percent over the last three days, the group said.

Hardships in the country's largest city have prompted some embassies, including that of the U.S., to send diplomats' families out of the country.

Although the military regime had begun allowing in the first major international aid shipments, it snubbed a U.S. offer to help cyclone victims.

By doing so, the junta refused to take advantage of Washington's enormous ability to deliver aid quickly, which was evident during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.

With roads in the Irrawaddy delta washed out and the infrastructure in shambles, large swaths of the region are accessible only by air, something few other countries are equipped to handle as well as the U.S.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej told reporters Friday that he will try to go to Myanmar on Sunday to persuade the junta to accept U.S. help.

But the junta told Samak his Myanmar counterpart is too busy to meet with him, said a Thai army general, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

But a Taiwanese Buddhist leader who just returned from Yangon said Friday that Myanmar had mobilized soldiers and civilians to transport aid to cyclone victims.

"They try to handle the relief work by themselves as much as possible because they don't have the time to deal with external criticism," Master Hsin Tao said.

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