Cyclone Nargis killed 243 people when it slammed into Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta and the former capital of Yangon, the BBC said yesterday, citing a state television report in the army-ruled former Burma. Myanmar's military government declared disaster areas in five states yesterday after the Category 3 cyclone tore through the Irrawaddy delta, flattening two towns.

Packing winds of 190 km per hour when it hit on Saturday morning, Cyclone Nargis devastated the former Burma?s leafy main city, littering the streets with overturned cars, fallen trees and debris from battered buildings. ?Utter war zone,? one Yangon-based diplomat said in an email to Reuters in Bangkok. ?Trees across all streets. Utility poles down. Hospitals devastated. Clean water scarce.? Official newspapers still being printed in Yangon said only one in four buildings were left standing in Laputta and Kyaik Lat, two towns deep in the rice-producing delta and accessible mainly by boat. In Yangon, many roofs were ripped off even sturdy buildings, suggesting damage would be severe in the shanty towns that sit on the outskirts of the sprawling riverside city of 5 million people.

Foreign aid workers, whose movements are restricted by the ruling military junta, had not managed to reach many impoverished areas to assess the impact. ?I have never seen anything like it,? one retired government worker said. ?It reminded me of when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States.?

Food prices doubled

Although the sun was shining by yesterday morning, the former capital was without power and water, and food prices had doubled, with many storeholders unsure of when they would be able to replenish stocks. An official said it was impossible to know when the power supply ? hit-and-miss at the best of times in one of Asia's poorest countries ? would be restored. ?We still have to clear the mess.?

United Nations disaster experts said it would be days before the full extent of the damage was known in a country ruled since 1962 by secretive and ruthless military regimes. Bunkered down in Naypyidaw, a new capital 240 miles to the north of Yangon, the ruling generals will almost certainly have avoided the worst of the storm.

The death toll is expected to climb as authorities slowly make contact with outlying towns and villages along the coast, where weather forecasters had predicted a storm surge of up to 3.5 m. They are also likely to uncover victims beneath some of the buildings that collapsed in Yangon under the force of the cyclone, which had been gathering steam for days in the tropical waters of the Bay of Bengal.

?It was a direct hit on a major city,? said Terje Skavdal, regional head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). ?The material damage is enormous for sure.? The UN had made an offer of assistance but was yet to receive a response from the junta, he added.

An official at Yangon International Airport said all incoming flights had been diverted to the second city of Mandalay, and all departures from Yangon had been cancelled. Thai Airways in Bangkok said flights would resume today. State media said four vessels sank in Yangon harbour, and jetties in ports had come loose. By 0900 GMT, Nargis had tracked northeast into northern Thailand, with large amounts of rain but reduced wind speeds.