Dozens Reported Dead in Insein Prison Clash
| By THE IRRAWADDY | Monday, May 5, 2008 |
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 PRINT |
Thirty six inmates of Rangoon’s Insein prison reportedly died in a clash with troops and riot police after setting the jail ablaze as Saturday’s cyclone hit the city.
Prison sources said prisoners had demanded to be moved to security after the cyclone blew off the roof of the jail’s Building No. 1.
When prison authorities refused, the prisoners set fire to a hall, the sources said. Guards failed to suppress the rioters and called in troops and riot police, who opened fire.
It was not known on Monday how many prisoners had died in the fire or from gunshot wounds. Seventy injured were reportedly admitted to the prison hospital.
About 800 prisoners are confined in Insein’s No. 1 building.
| အင္းစိန္ေထာင္ မီးေလာင္ ၃၆ ဦးေသ၊ ၇၀ ဒါဏ္ရာရ |  |  |
| မဇၩိမသတင္းဌာန | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 05 May 2008 17:10 - ျမန္မာစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ခ်င္းမိုင္။ ။ နာမည္ဆိုးျဖင့္ ေက်ာ္ၾကားေသာ အင္းစိန္ အက်ဥ္းေထာင္တြင္ စေနေန႔က မီးေလာင္မႈ ျဖစ္ပြားျပီး အဓိကရုဏ္း ျဖစ္ပြားရာ လူ ၃၆ ဦး ေသဆံုးျပီး ၇၀ ေက်ာ္ ဒဏ္ရာ ရသြားခဲ့သည္။ Confirmed deaths: 3,939 from Yangon and Irrawaddy division 2879 Missing ( Yangon and Irrawaddy division ) IN BOGALAY alone ten of thounsands deaths - forcasted IN Lupputta alone thousands deaths - forcasted Junta must open international humanitarian assistance and set national mourning days. From SPDC Radio Announcement Nearly 4,000 People Dead; 3,000 People Missing
Officials said on Monday nearly 4,000 people died in the wake of cyclone Nargis which swept through Burma on Saturday. An estimated 3,000 people are missing. Several hundred thousand of people may be homeless throughout the Irrawaddy delta. Residents of Burma's biggest city, Rangoon, face the third day of severe shortages of water, power and other essentials as they battle to clean up after the disastrous cyclone. Older citizens said they had never seen Rangoon, a city of some 6.5 million, so devastated in their lifetimes.
"It's only a few days left before the coming referendum and people are eager to cast their vote," the state-owned Burmese language newspaper Myanma Ahlin said on Monday. Pro-democracy groups in the country and many international critics have branded the constitution as merely a tool for the military's continued grip on power. Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and squashing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box. Some in Rangoon complained that the 400,000-strong military was doing little to help victims after Saturday's storm, only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents to cope on their own in most other areas. Residents, as well as Buddhist monks from the city's many monasteries, banded together on Monday, wielding axes and knives to clear roads of tree trunks and branches torn off by the cyclone’s 190 kph (120 mph) winds. With the city's already unstable electricity supply virtually nonfunctional, citizens lined up to buy candles, which doubled in price, as well as water as a lack of electricity-driven pumps left most households dry. Some walked to the city's lakes to wash.
Public transport was almost at a standstill although airlines announced that Rangoon's international airport had reopened for foreign and domestic flights on Monday. Most telephone landlines, mobile phones and Internet connections were down. With the city plunged into almost total darkness overnight, security concerns mounted, and many shops sold their goods through partially opened doors or iron grills. At least 351 people were killed, including 162 who lived on Haing Gyi island off the country's southwest coast, military-run Myaddy television station reported. Many of the others died in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. "The Irrawaddy delta was hit extremely hard not only because of the wind and rain but because of the storm surge," said Chris Kaye, the UN's acting humanitarian coordinator in Rangoon. "The villages there have reportedly been completely flattened." State television reported that in the Irrawaddy's Labutta township, 75 percent of the buildings had collapsed. The UN planned to send teams on Monday to assess the damage, Kaye said. Initial assessment efforts had been hampered by roads clogged with debris and downed phone lines, he added. The Forum for Democracy in Burma and other dissident groups outside Burma urged the military junta on Sunday to allow aid groups to operate freely in the wake of the cyclone.
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