Yangon, May 05: The death toll from a devastating cyclone that swept through Myanmar has risen to almost 4,000, a State radio station said today.

Nearly 3,000 were unaccounted for in a single town.

The radio station, broadcasting from the country's capital Naypyitaw, said that 2,879 more people are unaccounted for in a single town, Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area where the storm wreaked the most havoc.

The government had previously put the death toll countrywide from Saturday's Cyclone Nargis at 351 before increasing it today to 3,939 .

The storm has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and without clean drinking water, said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in Bangkok, Thailand for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Yangon, the country's biggest city, was without electricity except where gas-fed generators were available.

Many roads remained littered with debris.

Officials from the military government met today with representatives of international aid agencies to discuss providing assistance.

Neighboring Thailand announced that it would fly some aid in tomorrow.

The private aid agency World Vision said Myanmar's government had invited it "to provide assistance in the form of zinc sheets, tents, tarpaulins and medicine".

"The agency is coordinating with authorities to explore an airlift of emergency supplies into the country from one of its global warehouses," the group said in a news release.

The situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

Responding to the calamity the United Nations had earlier assured yesterday at it would send a team to assess the situation on Monday.

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