By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - A powerful cyclone that slammed intoMyanmar's Irrawaddy delta triggered a massive wave that gavepeople nowhere to run, killing at least 15,000 and leaving30,000 others missing, officials said on Tuesday.
"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the stormitself," Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swetold a news conference in the devastated former capital,Yangon, where food and water supplies are running low.
"The wave was up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high and it sweptaway and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages," hesaid, giving the first detailed description of the weekendcyclone. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
It is the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when143,000 people died in Bangladesh.
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the military were"doing their best", but analysts said there could be politicalfallout for military rulers of the former Burma who pridethemselves on their ability to cope with any challenge.
"The myth they have projected about being well-prepared hasbeen totally blown away," said political analyst Aung Naing Oo,who fled to Thailand after a brutally crushed 1988 uprising."This could have a tremendous political impact in the longterm."
Earlier, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state televisionthat 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 90 km (50miles) southwest of Yangon.
Reflecting the scale of the disaster, the ruling junta saidit would postpone to May 24 a constitutional referendum in theworst-hit areas of Yangon and the sprawling Irrawaddy delta.
However, state TV said the May 10 vote on the charter, partof the army's much-criticised "roadmap to democracy", wouldproceed as planned in the rest of the southeast Asian nation,which has been under army rule for the last 46 years.
The military's political plans have been slammed by Westerngovernments, especially after the army's bloody suppression ofBuddhist-monk led protests last September.
SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND HOMELESS
The government also lifted states of emergency in three ofthe five states declared official disaster zones and some partsof the worst-hit Yangon and Irrawaddy regions.
The Information Minister said the government had sufficientstocks of rice despite damage to grain stored in the hugedelta, known as the "rice bowl of Asia" 50 years ago when Burmawas the world's largest rice exporter.
After a meeting with Myanmar's ambassador to Bangkok, ThaiForeign Minister Noppadol Pattama said he had been told 30,000people were missing after Cyclone Nargis.
"The losses have been much greater than we anticipated," hesaid. Ambassador Ye Win declined to speak to reporters.
The total left homeless by the 190 km (120 miles) per hourwinds and storm surge is in the several hundred thousands,United Nations aid officials say.
The disaster drew a rare acceptance of outside help fromthe diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned suchapproaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Bernard Delpuech, a European Union aid official in Yangon,said the junta had sent three ships carrying food to the deltaregion. Nearly half the country's 53 million people live in thefive disaster-hit states.
Army-controlled media have made much of the military'sresponse, showing footage of soldiers manhandling tree trunksor top generals climbing into helicopters or greeting homelessstorm victims in Buddhist temples.
But with many people still furious at the Septembercrackdown, there is an inevitable sense of the army failing todo enough.
"The regime has lost a golden opportunity to send thesoldiers as soon as the storm stopped to win the heart and soulof people," one retired civil servant told a Reuters.
"But where are the soldiers and police? They were veryquick and aggressive when there were protests in the streetslast year," he said.
"MASSIVE, TERRIBLE"
Aid agency World Vision in Australia said it had beengranted special visas to send in personnel to back up 600 staffin the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
"This is massive. It is not necessarily quite tsunamilevel, but in terms of impact of millions displaced, thousandsdead, it is just terrible," World Vision Australia head TimCostello said.
"Organisations like ours have been given permission, whichis pretty unprecedented, to fly people in. This shows how graveit is in the Burmese government's mind," he said.
The town-by-town list of dead and missing announced by NyanWin, a major-general, showed 14,859 deaths in the Irrawaddyarea and 59 in and around Yangon, the country's biggest city.
Residents of the city of 5 million were queuing up forbottled water and there was still no electricity four daysafter the cyclone struck.
Prices of food, fuel and construction materials haveskyrocketed, and most shops have sold out of candles andbatteries. An egg costs three times what it did on Friday.
"Generators are selling very well under the generals," saidone man waiting outside a shop.
(Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Grant McCool and AlexRichardson)
