Rain lashes Myanmar cyclone survivors

Heavy rains pelted homeless cyclone survivors in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta yesterday, complicating the already slow delivery of aid to more than 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease.

As more foreign aid trickled into the former Burma, critics ratcheted up the pressure on its military rulers to accelerate a relief effort that is only delivering an estimated tenth of the supplies needed in the devastated delta.

"The response of the regime in Burma to this crisis has been absolutely callous and those paying the price of this callousness have been the long-suffering Burmese people," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told Parliament.

An Australian air force plane landed in Yangon, Myanmar's main city, with 31 tonnes of emergency supplies, a day after the first US military aid flight arrived in a country Washington has described as an "outpost of tyranny".

Two more US flights arrived yesterday as part of a "confidence building" effort to prod Myanmar's reclusive generals into allowing a larger international relief operation 11 days after the disaster left up to 100,000 dead or missing.

The storm raged through an area home to nearly half of Myanmar's 53 million people, as well as its main rice-growing region. About 5,000 square kilometres of land remain under water.

Most of the casualties were killed by a 3.5-metre wall of water churned up by the cyclone's 190 kph winds.

France, Britain and Germany yesterday called for the world to deliver aid without the junta's agreement, using a little used UN principle of the "responsibility to protect".

Myanmar state TV said the official death toll had risen to 34,273 from nearly 32,000 and 27,838 were missing.

Tens of thousands of people throughout the delta are crammed into Buddhist monasteries and schools after arriving in towns that were on the breadline even before the disaster.

Lacking food, water and sanitation, they face the threat of killer diseases such as cholera. Heavy tropical rains added to their misery.

"Where I am now there's over 10,000 homeless people and it's pouring rain," Bridget Gardener of the International Red Cross said during a rare tour of the delta by a foreign aid official.

While a steady stream of aid flights have landed in Yangon, only a fraction of the relief needed is getting to the delta due to flooding and the junta's desire to keep most foreign aid and logistics experts either out of the country or in Yangon.

The World Food Programme said it was able to deliver less than 20 per cent of the 375 tonnes of food a day it wanted to move into the flooded delta.

Myanmar state TV said six ships carrying 500 tonnes of supplies had left Yangon for the delta yesterday.

International relief organisations say their local staff are stretched to breaking point, while Medicins Sans Frontieres said its workers faced "increasing constraints".