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Children wait while rice is handed out near Kundangon May 11, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) |
The first international aid official permitted into Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta described towns rendered unrecognizable, and thousands of survivors without shelter while the Joint Typhoon Warning center said Wednesday another cyclone was forming in the region.
Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian relief program, couldn't say where the landfall would be or when it would become a full-fledged cyclone. But she said the chances of another cyclone were good.
Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching survivors in the areas hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.
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Children congregate outside a school that is being used as a camp for Internally Displaced People in Kaw Hwu near Kundangon May 11, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) |
"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head.
UN officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Eleven days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Gardner and her assessment team were able to visit five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, 10,000 people are living without shelter as rain continued to tumble from the sky.
"The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
