Up to 10,000 people are dead and millions homeless and hungry in cyclone-hit Bangladesh, officials said Sunday, as the army and aid workers battled to reach the devastated coast.
Three days after cyclone Sidr tore into one of the world's poorest nations from the Bay of Bengal, rescue workers were still fighting their way through a landscape of flattened villages and traumatised crowds.
Survivors on the isolated southern coast, where many areas were still out of reach for aid convoys, warned they would soon die unless help arrived. Victims told an AFP correspondent who managed to reach this coastal area that they had not seen any aid workers, let alone a plane or helicopter. Officials said the humanitarian situation in coastal districts like Barguna, 200 kilometres (130 miles) south of the capital Dhaka, was catastrophic. The chairman of the Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society, the country's central humanitarian organisation, said 3,000 bodies had already been recovered.
He said the death toll "may cross 5,000, but it will remain below 10,000." Officials have stressed they expect many more victims will be found in remote areas, including around poor fishing villages in the string of small islands off the coast.
Aid efforts were being hampered by roads blocked by fallen trees and the sheer scale of the devastation.
Red Cross and Red Crescent workers said they were using their network of volunteers to distribute dried food and plastic sheeting for temporary shelters, but that many helpers were themselves victims.