Bangkok: Millions of people in Myanmar have been left homeless by a devastating cyclone and piles of bodies have begun rotting in the disaster zone, a director of aid agency Save the Children said today.

Cyclone Nargis, which slammed in the southern coast on Saturday has left at least 22,000 people dead and another 41,000 missing by the official count, but the toll is expected to rise.

"There are 41,000 people missing but most people assume most of those 41,000 missing are dead," said Andrew Kirkwood, Myanmar country director for Save the Children, one of the few aid agencies allowed to operate there.

"And clearly there are millions of homeless, but how many millions we don t know," he said by telephone from Yangon.

Kirkwood said the organisation's staff had gathered harrowing eyewitness accounts from the worst-hit area of the Irrawaddy Delta region, a low-lying agricultural region, which was inundated by a huge storm surge.

"One team came across thousands of people killed in one township, with piles of rotting bodies lying on the ground as the water had receded," he said.
Source : PTI