Copenhagen: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) sent today three million water purification tablets to Myanmar from its stocks in Copenhagen to help devastated parts of the cyclone-hit country, the UN said.

"Drinking water is the top priority in Myanmar right now," UNICEF's spokeswoman in Denmark, Karin Aaen, said, adding that the shipment would make it possible to purify five million liters of water for hundreds of thousands of people in urgent need.

UNICEF said its biggest fear was that children would die of cholera and diarrhoea, which spread easily through polluted water.

"Young children are already weakened by the lack of food and water and are very vulnerable to diarrhoea and other sicknesses. For them, drinking water and medicine are a matter of life and death," Aaen said.

UNICEF said it would also send hospital instruments and medicine in the days to come.

State-run Myanmar television said today the death toll from Cyclone Nargis that flooded much of the country's southwest delta and wiped out entire towns and villages had risen to 22,997,with 1,430 injured and 42,119 missing.

But a local military official in the south told AFP an estimated 80,000 people had died in the remote district of Labutta alone, and the top US diplomat in the country said the total toll could be more than 100,000.

Source : PTI