Hundreds of thousands without shelter in Myanmar

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people are without shelter and drinking water in military-ruled Myanmar after a devastating cyclone tore through the Irrawaddy delta, a United Nations official said on Monday.

Aid agencies scrambled to deliver plastic sheeting, water and clothing from stockpiles in the former Burma, where at least 351 people died in the cyclone that slammed into the delta region on Saturday before devastating Yangon.

The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities make contact with hard-hit islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation of 53 million.

"How many people are affected? We know that it's in the six figures," Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok, told Reuters after an emergency aid meeting. "We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know."

Assessment teams were working in the five declared disaster zones that are home to 24 million people, but it could take days to get a fuller picture due to impassable roads and flooding.

The U.N. office in Yangon said there was an urgent need for plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, cooking equipment, mosquito nets, health kits and food.

It said the situation outside Yangon was "critical, with shelter and safe water being the principal immediate needs".

The military, which has ruled the impoverished Southeast Asian nation for 46 years and is shunned by the West, has not issued a formal appeal for help since Cyclone Nagris struck on Saturday.