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YANGON - Rice fields littered with corpses, desperate survivors homeless and with nothing to eat or drink -- witnesses paint a horrifying picture of Myanmar's remote typhoon-devastated south.
Few outsiders are allowed to work inside the reclusive country, and fewer still have been able to reach the swampy Irrawaddy river delta which was hardest-hit when cyclone Nargis slammed into the coast on Saturday.
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Christian relief organisation World Vision, one of the few international agencies allowed to work inside the military-ruled state, said its teams had surveyed the worst-affected regions and witnessed scenes of desperation.
"They saw the dead bodies from the helicopters, so it's quite overwhelming from that height," said Kyi Minn, an adviser to World Vision's office in Myanmar's main city of Yangon. "Even from that height it's devastating."
More than 22,000 people have been killed in the disaster, which ravaged a huge swathe of southwestern Myanmar, affecting 24 million people or nearly half the country's population, according to the United Nations.
Kyi Minn likened the impact to the 2004 tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean, killing 220,000 people in a dozen countries but causing little damage in Myanmar.
"The impact of the disaster could be worse than the tsunami because it is compounded by the limited availability of resources on top of the transport constraints," he told AFP.
"Eyewitnesses tell us there are thousands without the basic needs of water, food and, in some areas, shelter. Now the weather is getting hotter again, people are quite desperate," he said.
"They have no water to drink, no food -- and they are having to stand outside with no roof. This is quite desperate."
World Vision is distributing its limited supplies inside the country, including clean water, clothing, shelter and rice. But Kyi Minn appealed to the international community for more help.
"We need outside assistance right away," he said. "Without clean water, there could be outbreaks of infectious diseases."
Medecins Sans Frontieres said its teams were trying to assess the damage outside the capital Yangon in areas which they suspect have been badly hit, and appealed to the government to allow them access.
"It is essential to have unrestricted and immediate access to all affected populations and regions in order to assess the needs and to react accordingly," said Bangkok-based spokeswoman Veronique Terrasse.
MSF said that even in two townships in Yangon where it had begun distributing food, water and plastic sheeting, 80 percent of the homes had been destroyed in some areas and floodwaters were up to a metre (three feet) high.
"Under these circumstances infectious diseases such as cholera can spread easily," Terrasse said.
Myanmar has been criticised for failing to make preparations for the storm, and one Australian family which visited Yangon for a holiday over the weekend said the city was totally unprepared for the onslaught.
"We had no warning that it was coming, we just heard that it was a bad storm," said 32-year-old Pip Paton, who was in Yangon with her family, including a 15-month-old daughter.
"About midnight, that's when all the banging started. Big sheets of metal were torn off the hotel where we were all staying, glass windows were shattered," she told AFP.
"Both our rooms were flooded, because the windows couldn't stand the force of the wind coming in."
The hotel locked its guests inside until Saturday afternoon when the winds subsided. Paton said that when they emerged, there was little attempt to clear up the damage.
"People just seemed to be in shock. We didn't see any military at all, just police in armoured cars. On Saturday afternoon, we did see some vans, but most of the guys were standing around smoking," she said.
"Military came out with big chainsaws in one or two areas, but mainly the locals were out chopping up trees themselves."
"Cars were squashed by the trees, massive trees. Roofs were torn off, it was just a big mess," she said. - AFP/ir
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