Cyclone toll could reach 13,000: Myanmar Minister

The death toll from a devastating cyclone that swept through Myanmar is 4,000 and could rise to 15,000, the country' foreign minister said on Monday.
State radio said the number of dead in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta from Saturday's Cyclone Nargis had reached 3,939, and that almost 3,000 people in a single town there were unaccounted for.
Foreign diplomats said Foreign Minister Nyan Win acknowledged the possibility of 10,000 dead at a briefing given to them and representatives of UN and international aid agencies. On Sunday, the initial death toll was given as 351.
At the meeting, Myanmar officials appealed for international humanitarian assistance, including urgently needed roofing materials, plastic sheets and temporary tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was held behind closed doors, said the foreign minister acknowledged 59 deaths in the country's largest city of Yangon.
The government radio station in the capital, Naypyitaw, said 2,879 people were unaccounted for in Bogalay, a town in the Irrawaddy delta where the storm wreaked the most havoc.The storm left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and without clean drinking water said Richard Horsey, a Thailand-based spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Yangon was without electricity except where gas-fed generators were available. Many roads remained littered with debris.
The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.