Burma to accept aid for 30,000 in need of care

ABOUT 30,000 people in Burma are in need of care, the UN World Food Programme said yesterday - suggesting damage caused by the tsunami is much greater than officials in the secretive state have acknowledged.

The Myanmar (Burmese) government’s official Myanma Ahlin daily has said 53 people were killed, 43 were injured and 21 are missing after waves engulfed 17 coastal villages, leaving 778 people homeless.

International aid agencies and the United Nations have estimated that up to 90 were killed, while one opposition radio station said it believed hundreds may have died in the country.

Simon Pluess, the Geneva-based spokesman of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, said the number of people in need of food and water and shelter has risen to about 30,000.

“In the first stage the Burmese government thought they could deal with the problem themselves, but they revised their position. So our offer of service has been accepted,” Pluess said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders said their teams have begun assessing islands in the far south of the country, which is also known as Burma. The area is close to the far south western coast of Thailand, where some 5,000 people died.

The ICRC and Myanmar Red Cross have hired boats and will do an assessment of the islands on January 4-5.

Doctors Without Borders in Switzerland, the medical charity’s operational unit for Burma, said so far little damage and minimal deaths have been uncovered. But a team was surveying the southern area, and a report was expected in about two days.