Torrential rain lashed victims of Cyclone Nargis on Friday as Myanmar's junta admitted more than 130,000 people were dead or missing, putting the disaster on a par with a 1991 cyclone that killed 143,000 in neighbouring Bangladesh.
In a shock update to a death toll that had consistently lagged behind international aid agency estimates, state television in the army-ruled former Burma said 77,738 people were dead and another 55,917 missing. The May 2 storm has left another 2.5 million people clinging to survival in the delta, where thousands of destitute victims are lining roadsides, begging for help in the absence of large-scale government or foreign relief operations.
In the storm-struck town of Kunyangon, around 100 km (60 miles) south-west of Yangon, men, women and children stood in the mud and rain, their hands clasped together in supplication to the occasional passing aid vehicle.
"The situation has worsened in just two days," one shocked aid volunteer said as crowds of children mobbed his vehicle, their grimy hands reaching through the window for scraps of bread or clothing. Their desperate entreaties expose the fragility of the military government's claims to be on top of emergency aid distribution for victims of the cyclone, which flooded an area of delta the size of Austria.
Aid groups, including United Nations agencies, say only a fraction of the required food, water and emergency shelter materials is getting through, and unless the situation improves thousands more lives are at risk.
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