| 2 days 2 hours 24 min ago Cyclone suvivors cling to hope: amateur video
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(NECN: Myanmar) - Myanmar's rice-trading town of Labutta, the only spit of high ground in a vast watery landscape in the southern delta region of the country, has become a beacon of hope for tens of thousands who managed to live through the cyclone's fury, most losing homes and family members.
Survivors were straggling into the town from the flooded areas around, many injured and bedraggled, others wearing clothes they scavenged from the dead after losing all their personal belongings.
The survivors made the journey in rickety wooden boats with makeshift sails fashioned out of blankets, dodging the bloated corpses of buffaloes and dead
neighbors floating in the murky waters.
Amateur video obtained by The Associated Press showed survivors arriving at the end of their hazardous journey, many with tales of desperate hours clinging
to trees and debris.
But for the injured and hungry, Labutta offered scant relief, with food, clean water and medical supplies in short supply, and some survivors resorted to
drinking coconut milk.
The footage provided a first glimpse of Myanmar's worst-hit Irrawaddy delta, which has been cut off from the rest of the world since Cyclone Nargis struck on
Saturday, unleashing 12-foot-high storm surges that flooded the low-lying area of rice paddies and bamboo homes.
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