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 Corpses floated in salty floodwaters, and witnesses said survivors tried desperately to reach dry ground on boats using blankets as sails. The U.N. said some 1 million people were homeless in the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma.
"Basically the entire lower delta region is under water," said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.
"Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water," he said. This is "a major, major disaster we're dealing with."
State media in military-ruled Myanmar said more than 22,000 people died when Cyclone Nargis blasted the country's western coast on Saturday and over 41,000 others were missing.
But Horsey predicted the number of fatalities could rise "dramatically."
Aid workers started distributing water purification tablets, mosquito nets, plastic sheeting and basic medical supplies. But heavily flooded areas were accessible only by boat, with helicopters unable to deliver relief supplies there, he said.
A few shops opened Wednesday in the delta but were quickly stormed by people, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in Bangkok, quoting his agency's workers in the area.
"Fist fights are breaking out," he said.
The U.N. World Food Program says as many as 1 million people may have been left homeless, with some villages almost totally destroyed and vast rice-growing areas wiped out. The Irrawaddy delta is considered Myanmar's rice bowl.
The military junta normally restricts the access of foreign officials and organizations to the country, and aid groups were struggling to deliver relief goods.
"Most urgent need is food and water," said Andrew Kirkwood, head of Save the Children voluntary group in Yangon. "Many people are getting sick. The whole place is under salt water and there is nothing to drink. They can't use tablets to purify salt water," he said.
Save the Children distributed food, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and chlorine tablets to 230,000 people in Yangon area. Trucks were sent to the delta on Wednesday, carrying rice, salt, sugar and tarpaulin.
A Yangon resident who returned home from the area said people are drinking coconut water because of lack of safe drinking water. He said many people were on boats using blankets as sails.
Local aid groups were distributing rice porridge, which people were collecting in dirty plastic shopping bags. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared getting into trouble with authorities for talking to a foreign news agency.
In Geneva, the United Nations said Myanmar has authorized an airplane to bring U.N. aid supplies to cyclone victims.
But permission is still pending for a U.N. coordination team to accompany the flight, which was set to take off Wednesday. U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said U.N. staff in Bangkok also were awaiting approval of their visas so they can go to Myanmar and assess damage.
Officials in India, which is already sending relief aid by planes and navy ships, said they had warned Myanmar that Cyclone Nargis was headed for the country two days before it made landfall there.
The state-run Indian Meteorological Department had been keeping a close watch on the depression in the Bay of Bengal since it was first spotted on April 28 and sent regular updates about its progress to all the countries in its path, department spokesman B. P. Yadav said.
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 Many angry Yangon residents say they were given vague and incorrect information about the approaching storm and no instructions on how to cope when it struck.
State television news quoted Yangon official Gen. Tha Aye on Wednesday as reassuring people that the situation was "returning to normal."
But city residents faced new challenges as markets doubled prices of rice, charcoal and bottled water.
At a market in the suburb of Kyimyindaing, a fish monger shouted to shoppers: "Come, come the fish is very fresh."
But an angry woman snapped back: "Even if the fish is fresh, I have no water to cook it!"
Electricity was restored in a small portion of Yangon but most city residents, who rely on wells with electric pumps, had no water.
Vendors sold bottled water at more than double the normal price. Price of rice and cooking oil also skyrocketed
Britain offered about $9.8 million to help the crisis, and the U.S. offered more than $3 million in aid. President Bush said Washington was prepared to use the U.S. Navy to help search for the dead and missing.
However, the Myanmar military, which regularly accuses the United States of trying to subvert its rule, was unlikely to accept U.S. military presence in its territory.
The cyclone came a week before a key referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the junta.
State radio said Saturday's vote would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta. But it indicated the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.
A top U.S. envoy to Southeast Asia said Wednesday that Myanmar's military junta should be focusing all its efforts on helping victims of a devastating cyclone, not pressing forward with a planned constitutional referendum.
"It's clear that they have a tremendous disaster on hand that I would expect requires all their attention and resources," said Scot Marciel, who was appointed last week as the first U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
"It's a huge crisis and it just seems odd to me that the government would go ahead with the referendum in this circumstance," he said at a news conference during a visit to Malaysia.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppressing pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years.
At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained in September when the military cracked down on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.
[Associated
Press]
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