BANGKOK — The military leaders of Myanmar seized a shipment of United Nations food aid on Friday intended for victims of a devastating cyclone, declaring that they would accept donations of food and medicine but not the foreign aid workers international groups say are in equally short supply there.
The ruling junta continued to permit a small number of aid deliveries and promised to allow the first air shipment from the Pentagon on Monday, a significant concession because the United States has been Myanmar’s leading critic, imposing sanctions and lobbying for a United Nations resolution condemning the nation’s generals for human rights violations.
But the refusal of the country’s iron-fisted rulers to allow doctors and disaster relief experts to enter in large numbers contributed to the growing concern that starvation and epidemic diseases could end up killing people on the same scale as the winds, waves and flooding that destroyed villages across a wide swath of coastal Myanmar nearly a week ago.
The International Red Cross estimated Friday that the combined efforts of relief agencies and the Myanmar government have distributed aid to only 220,000 of up to 1.9 million people left homeless, injured or subject to disease and hunger after the storm.
Rest of the story at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/asia/10myanmar.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
I've been following the stories for days on this but that article really took the cake. The story is rather close to my heart because I have a really good friend who is a burmese. She's safe here in Singapore and from what I've found out, her parents are alive and only power is down for them. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
interesting stories for the world to read and respond to Click hereScroll all the way down to read replies.Show all stories by Author:  19871 ( Click here )
Halloween is Right around the corner.. .
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