YANGON, Myanmar — Police barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in hard-hit areas Tuesday, while emergency food shipments backed up at the main airport for Myanmar’s biggest city.
And Myanmar’s troubles could be just beginning. The U.N. said today that another cyclone in forming near Myanmar. A spokesman said the information about the possible cyclone came from the Joint Typhoon Warning center, which is part of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Center.
Relief workers in Myanmar reported some storm survivors were being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.
U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.
Survivors are jamming Buddhist monasteries or camping in the open. Drinking water has been contaminated by fecal matter, and dead bodies and animal carcasses are floating around. Food and medicine are scarce.
Ten days after the cyclone hit Myanmar, also known as Burma, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.
Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta, and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.
“No foreigners allowed,” one police officer said after waving a car back.
Supplies piled up at Yangon’s main airport, which does not have equipment to lift cargo off big Boeing 747s. It took 200 Burmese volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tons of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.
The report said Britain’s Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.
With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.
The United States made its first aid delivery Monday and sent in another cargo plane Tuesday packed with blankets, water and mosquito netting. A third shipment was en route.
Myanmar’s state television said the number of confirmed deaths from Cyclone Nargis had risen to 34,273, and the number of missing stood at 27,838. The United Nations estimates the actual death toll from the May 3 storm could be between 62,000 and 100,000.
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