Toll to rise by thousands

The death toll from the devastating cyclone that hit Burma has risen to almost 4,000,  state television said yesterday, warning thousands more may have been killed in the disaster.

Almost 3,000 more people are unaccounted for in a single town in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area.

Meanwhile UN agencies and international aid organisations met yesterday in Bangkok to make preparations for a major disaster relief effort in Burma.

"The UN support system is not sufficient inside Myanmar [Burma]," said Terje Skavdal, regional director of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), who headed the meeting.

Rangoon, Burma's largest city, was without electricity and running water yesterday in the wake of Cyclone Nargis which killed hundreds at the weekend. Today the Thai Army will airlift food and pharmaceutical products worth Bt9 million to its neighbour.

Army chief of staff General Songkitti Chakkabat said a

C-130 aircraft would fly in dry food, canned food and medicine.

State media meanwhile confirmed the military regime would go ahead with a referendum on Saturday on a new constitution that promises to cement the military's dominant role in the country's politics.

Nargis, which blew up in the Bay of Bengal on Friday, packing winds of up to 200 kilometres per hour, killed 19 people in Rangoon, 109 on the island of Hai Gyi and 223 in the coastal Irrawaddy Division, the state-controlled media reported.

The actual death toll was expected to be much higher.

Rangoon, the country's commercial hub, was among the hardest hit by the storm, which left the city of several million without basic utilities.