MYANMAR: The death toll from the cyclone that battered Myanmar last weekend rose above 22,000 on Tuesday as the international community prepared to rush in aid, state radio reported.
 

A news broadcast on Government-run radio said that 22,464 people have now been confirmed dead from Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the country's rice bowl and biggest city of Yangon early on Saturday.

The broadcast added that thousands more are missing. Relief efforts for the stricken area, mostly in the low-lying Irrawaddy River delta, have been difficult, in large part because of the destruction of roads and communications outlets by the storm.

In the cyclone's aftermath, State radio reported that the Government was delaying a Constitutional referendum in areas hit hardest.

Saturday's vote on a military-backed draft Constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm, the radio said. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.
 
The UN World Food Program, which was preparing to fly in food supplies, offered a grim assessment of the destruction: up to a million people possibly homeless, some villages almost totally destroyed and vast rice-growing areas wiped out.