Myanmar cyclone toll climbs to 22,500

The White house said Tuesday the U.S. will send more than $3 million to help victims of the devastating cyclone in Myanmar, up from an initial emergency contribution of $250,000.

The additional commitment of funds, announced by press secretary Dana Perino, comes as Myanmar continues to resist entry for a U.S. disaster assessment team. The Bush administration insists that permission for such a team to enter the Southeast Asian nation and look at the damage would allow quicker and larger aid contributions.

In the meantime, the decision was made to funnel $3 million more to the disaster-stricken zone. Perino said the money would be allocated by a USAID disaster response team that is currently positioned in neighboring Thailand.

Citing United Nation estimates, Perino said the most urgent needs included plastic sheeting, water purification tablets, mosquito nets, food and emergency health kits.

"The United States has made an initial aid contribution, but we want to do a lot more," Bush said.

"We are prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, and help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the military Junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country."

The U.S. Navy is making preparations to respond to any requests for assistance, U.S. military officials told CNN. The Navy has calculated it would take its nearest ships four days sailing time to get to the affected area.

At a news conference in Yangon, the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said 41,000 people were still missing in the aftermath of the cyclone, which triggered a surge of water inland from the sea.

“More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself,” he said, in the first official description of the destruction. “The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee.”

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages were almost totally destroyed.

Myanmar's military government raised its death toll from Cyclone Nargis on Tuesday to nearly 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.

Survivors were facing their third night without electricity in the aftermath of the historic cyclone that also clogged roads with thousands of downed trees.

Diplomats were summoned to a government briefing Monday as the reclusive southeast Asian country's ruling military junta issued a rare appeal for international assistance in the face of an escalating humanitarian crisis.

A state of emergency was declared across much of the country following the 10-hour storm that left swathes of destruction in its wake.

The scale of the disaster from Saturday's devastating cyclone 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.

The secretive military, which has ruled the former Burma for 46 years, has moved even further into the shadows in the last six months due to the widespread outrage at its bloody crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks in September.

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has issued a "disaster declaration" in the country and authorized the release of $250,000 for cyclone relief efforts, Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Monday.

A disaster relief team is standing by, Casey said, but the Myanmar government had not given permission for the team to enter the country.

U.S. first lady Laura Bush blasted the military government, saying the lack of warning before the deadly cyclone hit was the latest example of "the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs."

Hakan Tongkul, with the United Nation's World Food Programme, said residents in Yangon needed urgent assistance. "This has pushed people to the edge. All that they have has been blown away."

Burma's leaders say they will accept external help, in a move correspondents say reflects the scale of the disaster.

The military government has traditionally been suspicious of aid agencies, limiting their activities.

But Andrew Kirkwood, Burma country director for Save the Children, said there were positive signs from the Burmese authorities. "Every indication is that everyone realises that this is an
unprecedented event in Myanmar's (Burma's) history and the government
is much more open to international assistance than it has ever been."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN would do "whatever [necessary] to provide urgent humanitarian assistance".

A shipment of aid from Thailand is due to arrive on Tuesday and India is sending two naval vessels.

People were "eagerly looking forward to voting", it said.

"They would be very stupid to go ahead with it," said Khin Maung Win with Democratic Voice of Burma, a broadcast media group run by opposition expatriates. "Thousands of people are dying or missing. It is very difficult to get around or get food and water. How can people vote?"

Myanmar, formerly called Burma, last held multi-party elections in 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy handily won. The military junta ignored the results. Suu Kyi, who is currently under house arrest, has been in detention without trial for more than 12 of the past 18 years.