As many as ten thousand people could have died in the catastrophic storm which ripped across Burma on Saturday, and the number is likely to rise as aid workers pick their way through rubble, floods and broken roads to the stricken areas of the Irrawaddy Delta.

    Foreign diplomats in Rangoon were told by Myanmar's foreign minister that he acknowledges that the cyclone death toll could rise to 10,000, after a day during which the official count had gone from 351 to 4,000 dead.

    "The confirmed number is 3,934 dead, 41 injured and 2,879 missing within the Yangon and Irrawaddy divisions," Burmese state radio reported. Three other divisions have been declared emergency areas after Cyclone Nargis swept across the country's most fertile and densely populated region on Saturday morning at speeds of 120 miles per hour.

    "How many people are affected? We know that it's in the six figures, Richard Horsey, of the United Nations disaster response office in Bangkok, told Reuters. "We know that it's several hundred thousand needing shelter and clean drinking water, but how many hundred thousand we just don't know."

    The cyclone coincided with a storm surge tide inundating fields and islands in the vast and low lying delta of the Irrawaddy, Burma's largest and most important river. In the towns of Kyaiklat and Laputta, three quarters of buildings were reported to have been destroyed.

    In Rangoon, the former capital and Burma's biggest city, local people, including Buddhist monks, were using handsaws to chop up tens of thousands of tall tropical trees which had blown over crushing cars and buildings beneath them. There were long queues at petrol stations and prices of commodities such as eggs were reported to have doubled.

    Telephone and electricity supplies to Rangoon have almost completely broken down, and shopkeepers were keeping their premises half shuttered, after reports of looting at food markets.

    An organisation of exiled Burmese opposition activists reported that 36 prisoners at the notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon were shot dead by police after a riot over deteriorating conditions caused by the cyclone.

    Apart from the loss of life, the injuries and the destruction of tens of thousands of homes, the disaster may have far reaching secondary effects. The flooding and destruction of sanitation systems increases the risk of epidemics, including malaria and typhoid, and adds to pressure on villages where many people subsist of less than a dollar a day.

    The stricken area is Burma's richest agricultural region, and the cyclone must have wrought terrible damage on the rice crop. World rice prices are at a record high already, provoking food riots in more than 30 countries. Burma is a net exporter of rice, and the destruction of crops in the Irrawaddy Delta will only add to upward pressure on international prices.

    Burma may be unable to keep its promise to sell rice stocks to other more needy countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where a cyclone last year destroyed crops.

    The World Food Programme has stocks of 500,000 tonnes in Rangoon and plans to bring in more. Thailand became the first country to provide aid by sending a C-130 transport plane loaded with food and medicines. Two Indian naval ships were on their way carrying relief and medical supplies.

    On Saturday Burma's military government is due to hold a referendum on a new constitution. The Government promises free elections in 2010. But Burmese opposition groups insist that the constitution is a sham that will simply transfer power from uniformed officers to a civilian dictatorship. The new constitution guarantees a quarter of all seats for the military and bars the Nobel Prize winning opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, from the presidency.

    Yesterday the government insisted that the referendum would go ahead. "The referendum is only a few days away and the people are eagerly looking forward to voting," the junta said in a statement confirming the vote would go ahead as planned.

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