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The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.
Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of them were being held outside Burma while awaiting the junta's permission for delivery.
Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday's 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.
A spokesman for the U.N. Children's Fund said its staff in Burma reported seeing many people huddled in rude shelters and children who had lost their parents.
"There's widespread devastation. Buildings and health centers are flattened and bloated dead animals are floating around, which is an alarm for spreading disease. These are massive and horrific scenes," Patrick McCormick said at UNICEF offices in New York.
Burma's state media said Cyclone Nargis killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing.
American diplomat Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, said the number of dead could eventually exceed 100,000 because safe food and water were scarce and unsanitary conditions widespread.
The situation is "increasingly horrendous," she said in a telephone call to reporters. "There is a very real risk of disease outbreaks."
A few shops reopened in the Irrawaddy delta, but they were quickly overwhelmed by desperate people, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in Bangkok, Thailand, quoting his agency's workers in the area.
"Fistfights are breaking out," he said.
A Rangoon resident who returned to the city from the delta area said people were drinking coconut water because there was no safe drinking water. He said many people were on boats using blankets as sails.
Local aid groups distributed rice porridge, which people collected in dirty plastic shopping bags, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared getting into trouble with authorities for talking to a foreign news agency.
U.N. officials estimated some 1 million people had been left homeless.
"Basically the entire lower delta region is under water," said Richard Horsey, the Thailand-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid. This is "a major, major disaster we're dealing with."
President Bush said the U.S. was ready to deliver aid and was prepared to use Navy ships and aircraft to help search for the dead and missing. But it wasn't known whether the junta, which regularly accuses Washington of trying to subvert its rule, would accept an American military operation in its territory.
