Myanmar cyclone deaths top 15,000; many missing

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Reflecting the scale of the disaster, the ruling military junta said it would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in the worst-hit areas of Yangon and the sprawling Irrawaddy delta.

However, state TV said the May 10 vote on a charter, part of the army's much-criticized "roadmap to democracy," would proceed as planned in the rest of the Southeast Asian country where security forces violently cracked down on protests last year.

Giving the first detailed account of the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 90 km (50 miles) southwest of Yangon.

After a meeting with Myanmar's ambassador to Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama said he had been told 30,000 people were missing after Saturday's devastating storm.

"The losses have been much greater than we anticipated," he said after ambassador Ye Win declined to speak to reporters.

The total left homeless by the 190 km (120 miles) per hour winds and 12 foot (3.5 meter) storm surge is in the several hundred thousands, United Nations aid officials say.

The scale of the disaster in the military-ruled southeast Asian nation 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.

Bernard Delpuech, a European Union aid official in Yangon, said the junta had sent three ships carrying food to the delta region, rice bowl for Myanmar's 53 million people. Nearly half the population live in the five disaster-hit states.

In its coverage of the disaster, state media have made much of the military's response, showing footage of soldiers manhandling tree trunks or top generals climbing into helicopters or greeting homeless storm victims in Buddhist temples.

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