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Thursday, May 15, 2008 - Web posted at 8:52:57 GMT Myanmar tightens access to victims YANGON - Myanmar tightened access to its cyclone disaster zone yesterday, turning back foreigners and ignoring pleas to accept outside experts who could save countless lives before time runs out. |
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A top European Union humanitarian official said there was now a risk of famine, after the storm destroyed rice stocks in a main farming region in one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. International aid groups held an urgent meeting in neighbouring Thailand, frustrated by a defiant regime that has held up visas for emergency workers to deliver food, water, medicine and shelter for up to two million people. But hope faded that the generals, deeply suspicious of the outside world, would make an exception, and there were warnings that time is running out as the government continues to insist on managing the catastrophe alone. "If there is a lack of access, more people will die," Louis Michel, the EU's humanitarian aid commissioner, said in an interview with AFP TV in Bangkok before heading to Myanmar for talks with the regime. "The fact that it is the rice bowl of Myanmar (that has been hit) and that all the stocks of rice have been destroyed - there is a risk of a catastrophe at the level of famine," he said. Even though the secretive generals may never allow the true scale of the catastrophe to become known, the regime itself says 66 000 people are dead or missing - and there are dire shortages of the basics of everyday life. The death toll from Cyclone Nargis which hit Myanmar on May 3 has risen to 38 491, with 27 838 people missing, state radio said yesterday. Nampa-AFP |
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