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...troops were signaling plans for a new push to break from areas where they had remained stuck for weeks. Details of the cease-fire remain largely unclear beyond an immediate end to the battles that have displaced thousands of residents from the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, a vast slum home to more than 2 million people...
Hundreds of thousands of Burmese are asking the same thing across the vast Irrawady delta, the country's rice bowl. Nationwide, the Burmese government estimates that more than 22,000 lost their lives. For the people who survived the cyclone's wrath, there is little time to grieve. Makeshift huts must be constructed, drinking water procured. And in at least five villages along the Irrawaddy, residents say that not a single government official has come to assess the damage or bring relief supplies nearly a week after the May 2-3 storm abated. Than Maw, who says some 400 people...
...Thursday, a few government trucks were ferrying water and medicine to the delta from the commercial capital of Rangoon, which was also hit by the cyclone. But a few dozen trucks will do little to allay the vast destruction. In Bogalay, once a prosperous trading port, one third of buildings have collapsed. At a jetty along the Irrawady, two nearly week-old bodies, an adult and a child, lay among the storm's detritus of plywood, bamboo and coconut husks. Near the corpses, people went about their lives, tying bamboo poles together to build temporary lodging and jostling for limited...
...scene of devastation has reached apocalyptic levels. Aerial photos of the Irrawaddy delta, Burma's rice bowl, show much of the region still inundated by a vast surge of muddy water. The few residents who have been able to communicate with the outside world describe rice fields littered with bodies and villages where not a single bamboo shack was left standing. Even in the commercial capital Rangoon, where structures are more sturdily constructed, roofs were sheared off buildings and nearly all the city's main streets were uprooted of their columns of stately trees. "We have a major humanitarian catastrophe...
More than 1,010 have died in Sadr City since fighting erupted at the end of March, according to Iraqi government figures offered by al-Sheikhly. Another 2,930 have been wounded, he said. Ongoing fighting continues to worsen the crisis in the vast Shi'ite slum, the Baghdad stronghold of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army militia. Mohammed Kamel Hassan, a volunteer organizer in Sadr City for the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, said up to 500 families have already been displaced from areas around the fighting in recent days. "We have a big movement," said Hassan, whose organization is working...