Yangon, May 06: The death toll from the cyclone that battered Myanmar last weekend rose above 22,000 today as the international community prepared to rush in aid, State radio reported.

A news broadcast on Government-run radio said that 22,464 people have now been confirmed dead from Cyclone Nargis, which tore through the country's rice bowl and biggest city of Yangon early Saturday.

The broadcast added that thousands more are missing.

Relief efforts for the stricken area, mostly in the low-lying Irrawaddy River delta, have been difficult, in large part because of the destruction of roads and communications outlets by the storm.

In the cyclone's aftermath, state radio reported that the government was delaying a constitutional referendum in areas hit hardest.

Saturday's vote on a military-backed draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm, the radio said.

The UN World Food Program, which was preparing to fly in food supplies, offered a grim assessment of the destruction: up to a million people possibly homeless, some villages almost totally destroyed and vast rice-growing areas wiped out.

"We hope to fly in more assistance within the next 48 hours," WFP spokesman Paul Risley said in Bangkok.

"The challenge will be getting to the affected areas with road blockages everywhere".

Based on a satellite map made available by the United Nations, the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 30,000-square-kilometre area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines � less than 5 per cent of the country.

But the affected region is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.

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