Burma cyclone death toll 'at 351'

State television, which was still off air in Rangoon more than 36 hours after Nagris slammed into the city of five million, reported 20 000 homes destroyed on one island alone, a government official in the remote capital, Naypyidaw, said.

The island, Haingyi, is about 200km south-west of Rangoon on the western fringes of the Irrawaddy delta.

Nagris, which had been gathering steam in the Bay of Bengal for several days, devastated Burma's leafy main city, littering the streets with overturned cars, fallen trees and debris from battered buildings.

"Utter war zone," one diplomat said in an email to Reuters in Bangkok. "Trees across all streets. Utility poles down. Hospitals devastated. Clean water scarce."

Earlier, state media said 19 people had been killed in Yangon and 222 in the delta, where weather forecasters had predicted a storm surge of as much as 3.5m.

A tropical cyclone has killed at least 243 people in Burma and damaged thousands of buildings, according to state television.

Parts of the Irrawaddy region were hit particularly badly, with three out of four buildings blown down in one district.

Burma has declared Irrawaddy and four other regions, including the main city Rangoon, to be disaster areas.