Cyclone kills nearly 4,000 in Myanmar

(May 05, Yongon, Sri Lanka Guardian) A devastating cyclone killed nearly 4,000 people and left thousands more missing in army-ruled Myanmar, state media said on Monday, a dramatic increase in the toll from Saturday's storm.

The death toll only covered two of the five disaster zones where U.N. officials said hundreds of thousands of people were without shelter and drinking water in the impoverished Southeast Asian country.

"The confirmed number is 3,934 dead, 41 injured and 2,879 missing within the Yangon and Irrawaddy divisions," Myanmar TV reported three days after Cyclone Nargis, a storm with winds of 190 kph (120 mph), hit the Irrawaddy delta.

Earlier, official reports put the death toll at 351, but the number of casualties had been expected to rise as authorities made contact with hard-hit islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl for the nation of 53 million.

The military, which has ruled for 46 years and is shunned by the West, has not yet issued an appeal for international aid.

Its leaders, in the isolated new capital of Naypyidaw, 400 km (240 miles) north of Yangon, said they would go ahead with a May 10 referendum on a new army-drafted constitution that critics say will entrench the military.

The last major storm to ravage Asia was Cyclone Sidr which killed 3,300 people in Bangladesh last November. - Sri Lanka Guardian