More than 100,000 people may have been killed in the cyclone in Myanmar, a US diplomat said on the day before, citing information diplomats were receiving from the devastated Irrawaddy delta region of the Southeast Asian country.

?The information that we?re receiving indicates that there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the delta area,? said Shari Villarosa, the charge d?affaires of the US embassy in Myanmar. She spoke with reporters by conference call from the capital Yangon.

State Myanmar radio and TV, the main official sources for casualties and damage, reported an updated death toll of 22,980 with 42,119 missing and 1,383 injured in Asia?s most devastating cyclone since a 1991 storm in Bangladesh that killed 143,000.

Most of the victims were swept away by a wall of water from the cyclone that smashed into coastal towns and villages in the rice-growing delta southwest of Yangon. ?We estimate upwards of 1 million people currently in need of shelter and life-saving assistance,? Richard Horsey of the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters in Bangkok. He added that 5,000 square km of the delta were under water.

Aid began trickling into Myanmar on the day before. But there were worries abroad over whether the country?s ruling military junta would overcome its distrust of the outside world and open up to a full-scale international relief operation.

Thailand, China, India and Indonesia were flying in relief supplies and the US President and Australian Prime Minister appealed to the Myanmar government to accept their assistance. France called for the UN Security Council to get involved.

Cyclone Nargis ? Urdu for ?daffodil?

■ Cyclone Nargis takes its name from the word for ?daffodil? in Urdu. According to the US National Hurricane Center website, the convention of naming of cyclones dates back to the early 20th century when an Australian weather forecaster named major storms after politicians he particularly disliked. In a subtle example of meteorological allegory, the forecaster wanted to be able suggest a prominent public figure was ?causing great distress? or ?wandering aimlessly about the Pacific?. The US Weather Bureau formally started giving North Atlantic cyclones women?s names in 1953, before adapting to include men?s names in 1979. The idea was that naming a storm contributed to public awareness, and so helped people take evasive action. Forecasters only started naming tropical cyclones in the North Indian Ocean, where Cyclone Nargis was born, in 2004. Names are contributed in alphabetical order by the nine countries whose coastlines border the ocean ? Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and each name is used only once. Nargis (photo) was also the name of one of India?s most famous actresses. Nargis, whose hit films of the late 1940s and 1950s remain popular today, was married to actor-turned-politician Sunil Dutt and mother of current Bollywood bad boy Sanjay Dutt.