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Irate UN Cuts Burma Off After Junta Seizes Aid

Posted May 9, 08 8:06 AM CDT in World 

(Newser) – An enraged UN has shut off all further cyclone aid to Burma after its military junta seized two planes carrying a massive food shipment, CNN reports. “This is another example of them actively getting in the way of relief getting to the victims,” said the UN's Asia World Food Program director. The junta has also frustrated the UN by refusing to let aid workers enter the country.

So far, the junta has given no explanation for confiscating the goods, which the UN typically insists on distributing itself. “It should be on trucks headed to the victims,” complained the UN director. “You've seen the conditions they are in. That food is now sitting on a tarmac doing no good.” The shipment could have fed 95,000 people, a fraction of the 1.5 million the cyclone left destitute.

Sources: CNN, Reuters, Associated Press

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In this Burma News Agency photo taken on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 relief supplies from Bangladesh are unloaded at an airport in Yangon, Myanmar.   (AP Photo/Burma News Agency via Xinhua News Agency)
Airport staff load crates United Nations aid which contains medicine, tents and food bound for Myanmar onto a Russian cargo aircraft in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, May 7, 2008.   (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
In this Burma News Agency photo taken on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 relief supplies for Cyclone survivors are unloaded from a helicopter in a village in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, Myanmar.   (AP Photo/Burma News Agency via Xinhua News Agency)
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United Nations • Burma • Myanmar • Cyclone Nargis • cyclone • junta • humanitarian aid • World Food Program


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