YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's isolationist regime allowed the first plane of a major international airlift to land Thursday with aid for cyclone survivors, a U.N. official said, amid fears that lack of safe food and drinking water could push the death toll above 100,000.
But the junta was not allowing U.S. military planes to fly in critical relief goods and continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams urgently seeking entry to ensure aid is delivered to the victims.
A U.N. official said one airplane from Italy arrived in Yangon while three more would land later Thursday. The official did not wish to be named because she was not authorized to speak to the media.
Four planes loaded with high-energy biscuits, medicine and other supplies have waited for the last two days while frustrated U.N. officials negotiated with the military regime to allow the material into the Southeast Asian nation.
The U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Eric John told reporters that U.S. and Thai authorities earlier believe they had permission from Myanmar to land U.S. military C-130s. But Myanmar officials later made it clear that this was not the case.
John said it was not clear if they had reversed an earlier decision or if there was a misunderstanding.
Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej offered to negotiate on Washington's behalf to persuade the junta to accept U.S. aid.
Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, mostly in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta. But a top U.S. diplomat said Wednesday the toll could exceed 100,000.
Entire villages in the delta were still submerged from the storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.
"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.
The World Health Organization has received reports of malaria outbreaks in the worst-affected area, and fears of waterborne illnesses surfacing due to dirty water and poor sanitation also remained a concern, said Poonam Khetrapal Singh, deputy director of WHO's Southeast Asia office in New Delhi.
"Safe water, sanitation, safe food. These are things that we feel are priorities at the moment," she said.
Myanmar's generals, traditionally paranoid about foreign influence, issued an appeal for international assistance after the storm struck Saturday. They have since dragged their feet on issuing visas to relief workers even as survivors faced hunger, disease and flooding.
Even near Yangon, the country's largest city, stricken villagers complained that they had received no government assistance and were relying on Buddhist monasteries, which have been helping the public cope with the disaster.
"The government is not helping us. No aid is coming. There is no money, no rice," said Mu Sanda, one of some 50 people huddled in a monastery dining room converted into an evacuation center in Kyauktan, 15 miles southeast of Yangon.
Even China, Myanmar's closest ally, urged the military junta to work with the international community. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said China would give $4.3 million in aid in addition to an initial pledge of $1 million.
A U.N. spokesman in Bangkok, Richard Horsey, said between 30 and 40 visas requested by various U.N. agencies and private relief groups are pending with the Myanmar government.
"These are mostly people who have key experience in handling disasters of this scale, and so they can bring lessons from other similar disasters," he said. "The agencies are becoming frustrated."
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said some donors were delaying aid for fear it would be siphoned off to the army.
WFP's regional director, Anthony Banbury, indicated the United Nations had similar concerns.
"We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump it and take off," he said. "This is one reason why there is a hold up now, because we are going to bring in not just supplies but a lot of capacity to go with them to make sure the supplies get to the people."
Myanmar's state television Thursday showed Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the distribution was not given.
Navy vessels from India and planes from Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Bangladesh had arrived in recent days with medicine, candles, instant noodles, raincoats and other relief supplies, it said.
Although most Yangon residents were preoccupied with trying to restore their lives, activists using the cover of an almost-total power outage have written fresh graffiti on overpasses.
The graffiti include "X" marks , a symbol for voting "no" in a referendum Saturday on a new military-backed constitution. Voting has been postponed until May 24 in Yangon, some outlying areas and parts of the delta heavily damaged by the storm.
Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.
U.N. officials estimated as many as 1 million people were left homeless in Myanmar, which also is known as Burma.
Among them were the villagers in the Kyauktan monastery who said they had nowhere else to seek shelter and lacked food, water and money to rebuild their homes and rehabilitate their ruined rice fields.
Others in Kyauktan sought refuge in a primary school adjacent to the monastery where desks in classrooms were pushed together for makeshift beds.
Monks said they were receiving donations from the public and wealthier shop owners and then distributing them among the victims.
In Yangon, the roof of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was blown off and she was living in the dark after the electricity connection to her dilapidated lakeside bungalow was snapped in the cyclone, a neighbor said.
The detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate was using candles at night since she had no generator in her home, where she is being held under house arrest, said the neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
State radio said "unscrupulous elements" were spreading rumors of an impending earthquake, a second cyclone and looting in Yangon. Residents say some looting occurred at markets and stores in suburbs of Yangon earlier this week.
The warning about rumors appeared to be an attempt to calm the population as well as stop any gatherings that might turn into political agitation against widely detested military rule.
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