Arab Times :: Cyclone dead tops 22,500

Arab Times :: Cyclone dead tops 22,500: "Cyclone dead tops 22,500

YANGON (Agencies): Myanmar’s military government raised its death toll from Cyclone Nargis on Tuesday to more than 22,500 with a further 41,000 missing, nearly all of them from a massive storm surge that swept into the vast Irrawaddy delta. Of the dead, only 671 were in the former capital, Yangon, and its outlying districts, state radio said, confirming Nargis as the most devastating cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh. “More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told a news conference in the rubble-strewn former capital, Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low. “The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages,” he said, giving the first detailed description of the weekend cyclone. “They did not have anywhere to flee.”"