"As the scale of the disaster in Burma caused by Cyclone Nargis starts to emerge, relief agencies and rich countries are lining up to provide emergency aid. But with agencies already hit hard by soaring food prices, and Burma's own rice crop devastated, it is not clear where the relief will come from.
Nargis hit Burma on Saturday, bringing with it a reported oceanic storm surge more than 3 metres high, which is said to have destroyed some low-lying towns. The storm wreaked havoc throughout the heavily populated delta of the Irrawaddy River in the south, and hit the country's largest city, Rangoon.
Burma's military dictatorship today revised its earlier estimate of several hundred killed and admitted that at least 22,000 are dead - with thousands still missing. Many more people have been made homeless by the disaster.
"We have a major humanitarian catastrophe in our hands," Chris Kaye, head of the UN's World Food Programme in Burma, told journalists. "The numbers of people in need are still to be determined, but I'm sure we are talking hundreds and thousands.""
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