Aid for Burma

The country’s secretive ruling generals have given a UN aid plane permission to land, while neighboring India and Thailand have also sent aid flights. And a Chinese plane carrying 60 tons of aid has landed in the main city Rangoon, Chinese state media report. But complaints remain that the generals are hampering relief efforts by denying access to foreign aid workers.

A vast swathe of the southern Irrawaddy delta, that bore the full force of the cyclone, remains under water. Many roads are still blocked, and bedraggled survivors are emerging from this catastrophic scene, hungry and thirsty and vulnerable to disease, reports from the region say.

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