AP
Posted: 2008-05-07 00:01:34

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Cyclone victims in Myanmar’s biggest city faced new challenges Wednesday as markets doubled prices of rice, charcoal and bottled water, belying government claims that life was returning to normal after a storm that claimed 22,000 lives.

International aid began to trickle into Myanmar, but the stricken Irrawaddy delta, the nation’s rice bowl where most of the victims perished and over 40,000 are missing, remained cut off from the world.

With as many as 1 million left homeless after Cyclone Nargis hit over the weekend, the international community was struggling to deliver aid in the military-ruled country, which normally seeks to shut out foreign officials and restricts their access inside the country.

State television news Wednesday quoted Yangon official Gen. Tha Aye as reassuring people that the situation was “returning to normal.” He was shown thanking volunteers and visiting the village of Naungbo, outside Yangon, where locals were cutting apart downed trees and brush to clear the roads.

At a morning market in the Yangon suburb of Kyimyindaing, there was little sign of a return to normalcy.

“Come, come the fish is very fresh,” a fish monger shouted to shoppers, but an angry woman snapped back: “Even if the fish is fresh, I have no water to cook it!”

Electricity was restored in a small portion of Yangon but most city residents, who rely on electric wells, had no water.

Vendors sold bottled water at 500 kyat ($0.50, euro0.32) a liter, more than double the normal price. A standard 33-kilogram (73-pound) bag of rice had doubled in price to 45,000 kyat ($40, euro25), an astronomical price in a country where many scrape by on $2 (euro1.30) a day.

Cooking oil, another basic necessity, was priced at 8,000 kyat ($7, euro5) per kilogram, up from the normal price of 4,600 kyat ($4, euro2.50).

The U.N.’s World Food Program said late Tuesday it has begun distributing aid in damaged areas of Yangon, where 800 tons of food had arrived.

The WFP said some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out by Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar early Saturday.

Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar’s rice bowl.