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BANGKOK : At least one million survivors remain without aid more than a week after a deadly cyclone ripped through Myanmar, the UN said Saturday, with emergency supply shipments still held up by the regime.
Relief experts say time is running out for stricken people in the country's southwest delta who are desperately waiting for food, drinking water and medicine, and that the military is not acting quickly enough.
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High-energy biscuits that could feed 95,000 people are stuck in Yangon airport, while few visas have been given to increasingly frustrated aid workers, said Richard Horsey, spokesman for the UN's emergency relief arm.
"Approaching half a million beneficiaries have been reached (by UN agencies), but that's of between 1.5 to 2.0 million we've now estimated as severely affected," he said.
"At this stage we've only reached a quarter of people with any form of relief goods," he said, calling that "clearly way too slow."
The UN food agency said the military government had released a plane-load of cyclone aid into its custody Saturday, but that two shipments seized on Friday were still in government hands.
"They were impounded and we are hopeful... they will be released," the World Food Programme's Bangkok-based spokesman Marcus Prior said.
State media said 60,000 people were killed or left missing when Cyclone Nargis ripped through the southwest last weekend, while foreign officials estimate the death toll at closer to 100,000.
Myanmar's pro-democracy opposition said that more people were dying every day because of the military's aid restrictions and called on the UN to send help "by any means."
UN officials have said they fear the toll could climb if the people in need of help are not reached soon, especially with more bad weather approaching.
"With major rainfall predicted, starting over the weekend, this is a very grave concern," said Horsey. "It's a race against time."
The military has said it will accept money and aid, but wants to distribute all the aid itself, despite the country's woeful infrastructure.
The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR sent a convoy of aid trucks over the Thai-Myanmar border Saturday, which is expected to reach Yangon in two days, where it will be handed over to the government.
"We're hoping that the authorities will keep their word and give us access to monitor the distribution of these materials," Vivian Tan, a UNHCR spokeswoman, told AFP in the border town of Mae Sot.
UN children's agency UNICEF had three million water purification tablets arrive on a Thai Airways flight on Friday, but it was unclear if this much-needed supply had yet left Yangon airport.
Shantha Bloemen, UNICEF spokeswoman in Bangkok, said only that the supplies were going through "normal channels."
"I think it usually takes a day or two.... The government has not changed their procedures," she said. "We need to get this working like a normal relief operation."
In one of many donations from foreign governments, Pakistan said it would send two plane-loads of emergency aid on Sunday including tents, mosquito nets and medicines.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had dispatched a charter plane carrying food, shelter and medicine.
"We have permission from them (the government) to land. Then we need to see what will happen," said MSF spokeswoman Veronique Terrasse.
Another aircraft, chartered by MSF and the Red Cross, was scheduled to take off Saturday with 36 tonnes of materials on board including equipment to set up a purification station.
- AFP /ls
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