Soldiers and relief workers raced on Monday to get aid to millions left destitute by the cyclone in Bangladesh, where the official death toll has topped 3 100 and is certain to rise.
Untold numbers of survivors were in urgent need of food and water in the south, one of the poorest areas of the world, which was battered by a colossal storm on Thursday night that swept entire villages away.
The emergency-rule government called in the military to help but with roads blocked or simply gone, the relief effort was still struggling four days after disaster struck.
Homes, food stocks, crops, livestock and drinking water sources were all washed away by a 6m tidal wave that smashed into the coast along with Cyclone Sidr.
In many places the situation was desperate.
“Ninety-five percent of all the 40 000 houses in this sub-district have been washed away,” local administrator Salim Khan told Agence France-Presse in the coastal town of Patharghata. Dozens of distraught villagers were outside his office pleading to be given food, water and medicines.
“People are hungry. Some supplies are going out but it is taking time,” he said.
The World Food Programme said with most main roads now cleared, the aid effort was accelerating.
“Access is getting better every day,” said Douglas Casson Coutts, the World Food Programme’s country representative.
“We have had to use boats to deliver food but it was possible to do it,” he said, adding that he expected everyone in need would be reached within a few days.
But with the bloated corpses of people and animals dotting the landscape, and little left in the way of medical treatment, fears of disease added to the human misery across the region.
Officials said the armed forces were working to deliver relief by air, road and sea in conjunction with aid agencies.
Many survivors, however, said they still had not received any help.
“There are many places that still have not been reached but today [Monday] we are sending helicopters to 13 different places for the first time,” said navy Lieutenant Commander Mohidul Hassan.
With more than 3 100 confirmed dead, officials feared the toll could run into many thousands after victims in isolated areas were accounted for.
“It may cross 5 000, but it will remain below 10 000,” M Abdur Rab, chairperson of the Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society, said on Sunday.
“There are many villages in remote areas, including on sandbank islands, that are yet to be reached,” said Heather Blackwell, the Bangladesh head of the British aid group Oxfam.
“We don’t know the losses sustained in those regions. It could take weeks before we know exactly how bad this cyclone was.”
Along the coast, entire stretches of road were washed away, said an AFP reporter touring the worst-hit areas.
On one river island close to the southern coast, survivors said all bar half a dozen of the island’s 70 children had been washed away in the tidal surge.
Abdul Zabbar, a 50-year-old teacher in Barguna district, 200km south of the capital, Dhaka, said survivors might not be able to hold out for long.
“There is no food and drinking water. Bodies are still floating in the rivers and paddy fields,” he said.
The rice harvest — or four months of food — had been washed away. Oxfam said it believed 50% to 95% of crops had been destroyed in coastal zones, and that this will have “immediate and long-term devastating effects”.
Pope Benedict XVI appealed on Sunday for international solidarity to aid the Muslim nation, appealing to “help these brothers so sorely tried.”
The United States said it was sending $2-million for relief efforts. Two US navy ships carrying helicopters for medical evacuations were due to arrive offshore within five to seven days.
The most generous pledge has come from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which announced on Monday it was giving Bangladesh $100-million in emergency aid. — AFP