Aid pledged for flood-battered Myanmar

Thailand and Japan joined China in donating relief supplies, Myanmar state media announced on Wednesday, as UN agencies stepped up their response to the devastating floods.

Myanmar military helicopters and commercial airlines helped to deliver aid provided by the UN's World Food Program in recent days.

More than 250,000 people have been affected and 69 killed by flooding that was triggered last week by monsoon rains, according to the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement.

"Elderly people, women and children have begun evacuating from vulnerable areas," according to a report in the state-run "Global New Light of Myanmar" newspaper. People in the country's mountainous eastern region, however, remained largely cut off as floods have washed away roads.

United States promises aid

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur: "We will soon announce a flood relief aid package." He added that US relief agencies had already been coordinating with the Myanmar government.

Myanmar's government had made an appeal for international help on Tuesday, taking a different stance from the generals who ruled the country in 2008, when Cyclone Nargis left 140,000 people dead or missing. After the cyclone, the junta refused to admit to the scale of the disaster and did not request any international support.

Across the region, hundreds died and more than 2 million people were affected by floods caused by heavy monsoon rains, most of them in Myanmar, India and Pakistan. Scores of people were killed by floods in Vietnam and Nepal.

das/sms (AFP, dpa, Reuters)