A few aid shipments had arrived in Burma’s main city by Thursday, but the planeloads of supplies and heavy equipment needed to help millions of cyclone victims remain largely stranded outside the country. In a dramatic development, the ruling junta agreed to accept United States emergency aid after last weekend’s cyclone.
Burma’s military authorities a foreign aid workers struggled on Monday to assess the damage from a devastating cyclone that killed more than 350 people and left tens of thousands homeless. The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities slowly make contact with islands and villages in the delta, the rice bowl of Burma.
A cyclone killed more than 350 people in military-ruled Burma, ripping through Rangoon and the Irrawaddy delta where it flattened at least two towns, officials and state media said on Sunday. Packing winds of 190km per hour when it hit on Saturday morning, Cyclone Nargis devastated the Burma’s leafy main city, littering the streets with overturned cars.
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/ 14 January 2008
Several people have died while 70 000 others were displaced by floods in central Mozambique and the situation is expected to worsen till mid-February, the National Institute of Natural Disaster Management said on Monday.
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/ 16 November 2007
At least 629 people have died in Bangladesh as a result of severe Cyclone Sidr, it was officially stated on Friday. The cyclone roared ashore with winds of more than 250km/h, and the death toll was expected to rise further, with about 1 000 fishermen reported as missing.
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/ 19 September 2007
Tiny fish swim beside the dugout canoes that residents use to escape their flooded homes, riding the water gushing through the streets of Soroti, an eastern Uganda town. Across Africa, torrential downpours and flash floods have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools.
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/ 16 September 2007
Torrential downpours and flash floods across Africa have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools. This summer’s rains have killed more than 150 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and prompted the United Nations to warn of a rising risk of disease outbreaks.
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/ 14 September 2007
Soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have massacred hundreds of people and burned villages, forcing civilians to flee, during a counter-insurgency campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday. The watchdog group blamed President Francois Bozize’s elite guard for atrocities carried out since mid-2005.