YANGON, May 5: Myanmar’s military junta believes at least 10,000 people died in a cyclone that ripped through the Irrawaddy delta, triggering a massive international aid response for the pariah state in southeast Asia.

“The basic message was that they believe the provisional death toll was about 10,000 with 3,000 missing,” a Yangon-based diplomat told Reuters in Bangkok, summarising a briefing from Foreign Minister

Nyan Win. “It’s a very serious toll.”

The scale of the disaster from Saturday’s devastating cyclone drew a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The official toll on state media stands at 3,394 dead and 2,879 missing, although those figures only cover two of the five declared disaster zones, where UN officials say hundreds of thousands are without shelter or drinking water.

The casualty count has been rising quickly as authorities reach hard-hit islands and villages in the Irrawaddy delta, the former “rice bowl of Asia” which bore the brunt of Cyclone Nargis’s 190km per hour winds.

After getting a “careful green light” from the government, the United Nations said it was pulling out all the stops to send in emergency aid such as food, clean water, blankets and plastic sheeting.

“The UN will begin preparing assistance now to be delivered and transported to Myanmar as quickly as possible,” World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Paul Risley said.

Foreign Aid: The United States, which has imposed sanctions on the junta, said it had provided $250,000 in immediate assistance and a disaster response team was on standby.

“At this moment as I understand it the Burmese government has not given them permission to go into the country,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.

Two Indian naval ships loaded with food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicines would sail for Yangon soon, Indian’s ministry of external affairs said.

The UN office in Yangon said there was an urgent need for plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, cooking equipment, mosquito nets, health kits and food.

It said the situation outside Yangon was “critical, with shelter and safe water being the principal immediate needs.”

The junta leaders, bunkered in their remote new capital of Naypyidaw, 400km north of Yangon, said they would go ahead with a May 10 referendum on a new army-drafted constitution that critics say will entrench the military.

Prices Soar: In the former capital Yangon, food and fuel prices soared and aid agencies scrambled to deliver emergency supplies and assess the damage in the five declared disaster zones, home to 24 million people.

Clean water was scarce. Most shops had sold out of candles and batteries and there was no word when power would be restored.

Long queues formed at the few open petrol stations.

The price of a gallon of petrol has doubled on the black market, while egg prices have tripled since Saturday.

“How many people are affected? We know that it’s in the six figures,” Richard Horsey of the UN disaster response office said after an emergency aid meeting in Bangkok on Monday before the state TV announcement.—Reuters