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Thousands rendered homeless in Myanmar

—Photo: AP

Devastation: A street in Yangon on Sunday after the nation was battered by a cyclone.

YANGON: More than 350 persons died in Myanmar after a powerful cyclone — Nargis — knocked out power in the commercial capital and destroyed thousands of homes, said state-run media on Sunday.

The military-run Myaddy television station said five regions had been declared disaster zones following Saturday’s storm, which packed winds of up to 190 kmph. It said at least 351 persons were killed; 162 of the victims lived on Haing Gyi island, off the southwest coast. Many of the others died in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. Seventy-five per cent of the buildings in the Irrawaddy’s Labutta township had collapsed, it said.

“The Irrawaddy delta was hit extremely hard, not only because of the wind and rain, but because of the storm surge,” said Chris Kaye, the U.N.’s acting Humanitarian Coordinator in Yangon. The Meteorological Bureau had forecast the cyclone would cause tides to rise as much as 12 feet above normal levels, though no details of the actual rise were available on Sunday.

Mr. Kaye said the government told him earlier that thousands of homes were destroyed. The U.N. tried to send teams to assess the damage on Sunday, but their efforts were hampered by roads clogged with debris and phone lines that were down. They would try again on Monday, said Mr. Kaye.

Witnesses in Yangon said the storm blew the roofs off hundreds of houses, damaged hotels, schools and hospitals, and cut electricity to the entire city. The state-owned newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported that Yangon’s international airport remained shut and domestic flights were being diverted to Mandalay — located 560 km to the north.

Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Yangon, said she was up most of Friday night, enduring the whipping winds and torrential downpour that climaxed early on Saturday morning. She expected the damage to be much worse in rural areas.— AP

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