Bangkok (BLAZETRENDS) hundreds dead.
The lack of access, denounced today by the United Nations and the opposition to the military, among others, makes it difficult to know exactly the number of victims and the situation on the ground.
One of the areas of greatest concern is the Burmese state of Rakhine (western part of the country), a particularly neglected region where hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya Muslim minority – not recognized by the authorities – have lived for years in precarious camps for displaced persons. Burmese and whose Army persecutes.
“Unrestricted access to affected communities is required to deliver immediate, life-saving humanitarian assistance.
The military junta’s restriction of travel and access to the affected areas is a barbaric act,” the self-proclaimed National Unity Government (NUG), opposed to the regime that seized power through a coup in February, said on social media. of 2021.
The spokesman in Southeast Asia for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Pierre Peron, confirmed to BLAZETRENDS that the authorities maintain this Thursday the restrictions on the entry of international aid.
“There are scenes of widespread devastation,” in Sittwe and other western Myanmar towns where the cyclone made landfall on Sunday, UN agencies are prepared “to assess the full extent of the humanitarian situation, as soon as it is granted access”, highlights the latest OCHA update.
For its part, the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told BLAZETRENDS that although the geographical and security difficulties already existed before the cyclone, to access the displacement camps these “have worsened” after the natural disaster.
“We really need urgent attention to facilitate access to the affected population,” claimed an MSF spokesperson, expressing concern about the lack of drinking water and the health situation after the catastrophe.
Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Burma stressed on Twitter that “it is essential that humanitarian organizations be able to access and help communities most in need” by announcing an additional fund for emergency aid.
The biggest storm in a decade
Cyclone Mocha made landfall on Sunday between the southern coast of Bangladesh and the west of neighboring Burma, with sustained winds of more than 150 kilometers per hour, an area classified as “vulnerable” to natural disasters.
According to UN estimates, some 5.4 million people were in the path of Mocha, the biggest storm to hit the Bay of Bengal in more than a decade.
Preliminary data, and in the absence of verification from the opposition NUG, indicate that the cyclone would have left at least 455 people -431 of them in Rakhine-.
For its part, the military junta points out that Army boats and helicopters had transported aid to Rakhine and puts the death toll from the cyclone at 48 people, including security force personnel carrying out rescue work.