Relief workers and the Bangladesh army, air force and navy intensified efforts on Tuesday to reach millions of survivors of a cyclone that killed more than 3,100 people along the Bay of Bengal.
A huge relief operation for victims of Cyclone Sidr was under way with Bangladeshi airforce helicopters flying more sorties with the aim of reaching almost all the affected areas.
Bangladesh army relief and rescue teams have reached 70 percent of the affected areas, said officers manning a military control room opened after Thursday's cyclone.
But supplies of food were still woefully inadequate, said a journalist in Bagerhat district.
"Hundreds of hands go up to grab just one food packet. This is a mad rush but a tragic reality on the entire coastline ravaged by the cyclone," said a relief operator in the Patuakhali district.
The Category Four cyclone smashed into the coast of southern Bangladesh late on Thursday with 250 kph (155 mph) winds that whipped up a five-meter (16-foot) tidal surge.
The disaster was the worst in the impoverished country of 140 million since 1991 when a cyclone and sea surge killed around 143,000 people.
A much improved disaster preparedness plan, including storm shelters built all along the coastline, has been credited with saving hundreds of lives this time.
The country's army-backed interim government said supplies will increase over the next weeks once promised $142 million in emergency relief from international donors and the King of Saudi Arabia starts rolling in.
The navy and coastguard had started to work on rebuilding homes, defense sources said, and army troops were helping civil officials to remove uprooted trees blocking highways.
The relief effort would be boosted further when two C-130 planes from the U.S. Marines started operations. They arrived on Sunday.
The United States is also sending two amphibious naval ships with helicopters to reinforce the rescue and relief efforts.
No pictures, give food
The confirmed death toll from the cyclone was 3,113 on Monday, with 3,322 injured and 1,063 missing, Lieutenant-Colonel Main Ullah Chowdhury told reporters in Dhaka.
Media reports said the death toll had already crossed 3,500 and was likely to rise sharply.
"We are trying to reach all the affected areas on the vast coastline as soon as possible, then we will know how many people exactly have died," a government official said.
Officials in the areas -- mostly inhabited by fishermen but also some farmers -- said a shortage of drinking water and medicine had caused outbreaks of diarrhea in many places, where canals and ponds filled with saline water from the storm surge along the Bay of Bengal.
Grieving families begged for clothes to wrap around the bodies of dead relatives for burial. In some areas, they put corpses in mass graves.
Reporters and cameramen traveling in the disaster areas were being rebuffed by angry survivors.
"There is no need to print our photograph in the papers or show us on televisions. Please give us food, water and shelter," said one woman at Mongla, a fishing district near the country's second sea port.
Survivors were still frantically searching for their loved ones, a Reuters reporter in Patharghata, another fishing hamlet, said.
A local official in Patuakhali said children had started coming back to classes. Teachers now teach under the open sky as thousands of school buildings have been destroyed.
PHOTO CAPTION
Map showing the path of Cyclone Sidr across Bangladesh last week. [AFP]
Reuters