At least 351 people are feared dead after a cyclone hit Burma's Irrawaddy delta and the former capital of Rangoon, a government official said today, citing state media reports in the capital, Naypyidaw.
The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities manage to contact outlying islands and villages that felt the full force of Cyclone Nagris, a Category 3 storm packing winds of 190 km (120 miles) per hour when it hit early yesterday.
State television, which was still off air in Yangon after the storm, said that 20,000 homes had been destroyed and 90,000 people made homeless on the island of Haingyi in the Andaman Sea, the first part of the country to be hit by Cyclone Nagris.
Devastated by the cyclone, Rangoon has been described as akin to a war zone, with streets littered with overturned cars, fallen trees and debris from battered buildings.
"Utter war zone," one Yangon-based diplomat said in an email to Reuters in Bangkok. "Trees across all streets. Utility poles down. Hospitals devastated. Clean water scarce."
Official newspapers still being printed said only one in four buildings were left standing in Laputta and Kyaik Lat, two towns deep in the rice-producing delta and accessible mainly by boat. There was no mention of casualties.
Foreign aid workers, whose movements are restricted by the ruling military junta, had not managed to reach many impoverished areas to assess the impact.
"I have never seen anything like it," one retired government worker told Reuters. "It reminded me of when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States."
Although the sun was shining by this morning, the former capital was without power and water, and food prices had doubled, with many storeholders unsure of when they would be able to replenish stocks. Most shops had sold out of candles.
An Electricity Board official said it was impossible to know when the power supply would be restored.
"We still have to clear the mess," the official, who did not want to be named, said.
United Nations disaster experts said it would be days before the full extent of the damage was known in a country ruled since 1962 by secretive and ruthless military regimes.
Bunkered down in Naypyidaw, a new capital 240 miles to the north of Yangon, the ruling generals will almost certainly have avoided the worst of the storm.