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Web Site of National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma

30,000 in Burma Need Tsunami aid

Jan 3 (AP) - The U.N. World Food Program said Monday some 30,000 people in Myanmar are in need of care- suggesting tsunami damage may be greater than the country's secretive military regime has acknowledged.

The government's official Myanmar Ahlin daily has said 53 people were killed by the earthquake-triggered waves Dec.26. The United Nations and international aid agencies have estimated up to 90 people died; aid agencies in the countries said it is too early to tell if the actual toll is significantly higher than the official count.

The junta- which strictly controls the domestic media- said an additional 21 people were missing after waves engulfed 17 coastal villages, leaving 778 people homeless in the country formerly known as Burma.

Simon Pluess, the Geneva-based spokesman of the U.N. World Food Program , said the number of people in need of food and water and shelter has risen to some 30,000.

"In the first stage, the Burmese government thought they could deal with the problem themselves, but they revised the position. So our offer of service has been accepted," he said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders said their teams have begun assessing islands in the far south of Myanmar. The area is close to the southwestern coast of Thailand, where the tsunami killed more than 5,000 people and left nearly 4,000 others missing .

A computer model of the tsunami suggests Myanmar could have been hit as hard by the waves as southern Thailand, said Steven Ward, a research geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The model has not been validated with real-world measurements, which are needed to confirm that the computer has accurately predicted the path and strength waves.

"The model suggests waves equally strong have struck Burma," Ward said. "I'm not suggesting they did - it's just model."

Doctor without Borders spokesman Aymeric Peguillian acknowledged there have been rumors of many deaths in Myanmar." But as far as we can see at the moment, there is no massive damage... some material damage but not extensive,: the number of the casualties is limited," he said.

An assessment team from UNICEF in southern Myanmar sent initial reports of some destroyed and damaged homes and a need for clean water, according to UNICEF spokesman Karen Dukess in New York. She gave no figure for the number of death but said there were casualties in two coastal townships in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta area.

The Burmese section of the BBC's World Service said its reporters border regions hadn't been able to obtain eyewitness accounts of tsunami damage. The U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia said it did not have a death toll estimate.

However, the Norway-based opposition radio station, the Democratic Voice of Burma, said it was likely hundreds died.

"According to our sources nearly 400 people have died, mostly in southern Burma, DVB's news editor Moe Aye said. In addition, he said some 200 fishermen were believed missing from small island in southern Burma.

One fishing contractor, 37 -year-old Ko Myo Tun, was quoted by Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper as saying 17 people were killed in Kha Pyat Thaung, 220 miles southwest of the capital Yangon, when the village was hit by a 10-foot wave.

"All our huts were destroyed and 17 people killed in our village, mostly young children," he said.

Associated Press Writers Elaine Ganley in Paris and Alexander G. Higgeins in Geneva contributed to this story.

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