Heavy rains pelted homeless cyclone survivors in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta yesterday, complicating the already slow delivery of aid to more than 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease.

An Australian air force plane landed in Yangon, Myanmar's main city, with 31 tons of emergency supplies, a day after the first US military aid flight arrived in the country.

Two more US flights arrived yesterday as part of a "confidence building" effort to encourage Myanmar to allow a larger international relief operation 11 days after the disaster left up to 100,000 dead or missing.

Myanmar state television said the official death toll had risen to 34,273 from nearly 32,000 and 27,838 were missing.

Tens of thousands of people throughout the delta are crammed into Buddhist monasteries and schools after arriving in towns. Lacking food, water and sanitation, they face the threat of killer diseases such as cholera. Heavy tropical rains added to their misery.

"Where I am now there's over 10,000 homeless people and it's pouring rain," Bridget Gardener of the International Red Cross said during a tour of the delta by a foreign aid official.

The World Food Programme said it was able to deliver less than 20 percent of the 375 tons of food a day it wanted to move into the flooded delta. Myanmar state television said six ships carrying 500 tons of supplies had left Yangon for the delta yesterday.

International relief organizations say their local staff are stretched to breaking point, while Medicins Sans Frontieres said its workers faced "increasing constraints".

The Myanmar government has welcomed "aid from any nation" but has made it very clear it does not want outsiders distributing it.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/14/2008 page10)