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Death toll could reach 10,000: Myanmar Minister

— Photo: AFP

Displaced: Residents who lost their homes take shelter in a Buddhist temple in Yangon on Monday.

Yangon: The death toll from a devastating cyclone that swept through Myanmar is 4,000 and could rise to 10,000, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on Monday.

State radio said the number of dead in the country’s low-lying Irrawaddy River delta from Saturday’s Cyclone Nargis had reached 3,939, and that almost 3,000 people in a single town there were unaccounted for.

Foreign diplomats said Mr. Nyan acknowledged the possibility of 10,000 dead at a briefing given to them and representatives of U.N. and international aid agencies. On Sunday, the initial death toll was given as 351.

At the meeting, Myanmar officials appealed for international humanitarian assistance, including urgently needed roofing materials, plastic sheets and temporary tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.

The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was held behind closed doors, said Mr. Nyan acknowledged 59 deaths in the country’s largest city of Yangon.

A government radio station said 2,879 persons were unaccounted for in Bogalay, a town in the Irrawaddy delta where the storm wreaked the most havoc.

The storm left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and without clean drinking water said Richard Horsey, a Thailand-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. — AP

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