burma - 50,000 dead and counting - cyclone nargis

May 6, 2008 at 3:30 PM
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Foreign aid workers in Burma have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in saturday’s cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, in a disaster whose scale invites comparison with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The official death count after cyclone Nargis is 15,000, and the Thai foreign minister says he has been told that 30,000 people are missing but due to the incompleteness of the information from the stricken Irrawaddy delta, UN and charity workers in the city of Rangoon privately believe that the number will eventually be several times higher.

full story - www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3879492.ece

monks in rangoon

cyclone nargis

rangoon shanty towns

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[this is good]

damn!

dafunkysensual replied to Ivysgrandkid’s comment:
May 7, 2008
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so sad

good news and bad news on life in burma today - the first UN plane carrying relief supplies for the hundreds of thousands of victims landed in burma today following intense international pressure on the ruling military junta to open the country's borders to foreign aid agencies - that's the good news.

bad news is this - the death toll has risen to around 100,000 and a million have been left homeless - there is a very real risk of disease outbreaks and large areas of land are under floodwater - 95% of buildings in burma's largest city, rangoon are thought to have been destroyed - that sounds close enough to total devastation to me

[this is bad] According to the Times on-line the United Nations has suspended all relief flights to Burma amid a tense standoff with the military regime which is refusing to allow foreign aid workers into the country to help. The suspension followed the impounding of a UN World Food Programme aid shipment. The WFP organisation expressed “exasperation” at the intransigence of the isolationist junta in the face of a vast humanitarian crisis and that's not a surprise really.

burma - 50,000 dead and counting - cyclone nargis

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