Food dropped to Myanmar towns

Military helicopters dropped food and water today to the cyclone-stricken people of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, where entire villages have been washed away and one million people left homeless, officials said.

Nearly 22 500 people were killed and 41 000 are still missing after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the delta, Asia's most devastating cyclone since 1991 when a storm killed 143 000 in neighbouring Bangladesh.

"We estimate upwards of 1 million people currently in need of shelter and life-saving assistance," Richard Horsey of the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters in Bangkok after an emergency aid meeting.
"There are large swathes of the lower Irrawaddy delta completely under water. We are talking 5 000 square km under water. It's a vast area," he said.

Aid operations are underway
The military junta's aid operation has moved up a gear with some helicopter drops into the region, but land convoys were nowhere to be seen, a Reuters witness in the malaria-infested swamplands of the delta said.

Aid experts say Myanmar's ruling generals must overcome their distrust of the outside world and open their doors to a full-scale international relief operation if more victims are not to die of thirst, hunger and disease.

With disease, hunger and thirst threatening hundreds of thousands of survivors marooned in the delta, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd begged the junta to allowing in large scale humanitarian relief.

"Forget politics. Forget the military dictatorship. Let's just get aid and assistance through to people who are suffering and dying as we speak, through a lack of support on the ground," Rudd told reporters in Perth. Meanwhile in Washington, President George W Bush also asked the military to relax its tight grip and allow aid agencies, governments and the US Navy to help. - Reuters