AT least 15,000 people were killed after a devastating cyclone hit Myanmar on Saturday, Xinhua said yesterday.

Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country early Saturday with winds of up to 190 kmph. The cyclone blew roofs off hospitals and schools and cut electricity in Myanmar¡¯s largest city, Yangon.

It is estimated that the casualties in a single town Bogalay, in the country's low-lying Irrawaddy River delta area where the storm wreaked the most havoc, will exceed 10,000 and at least 1,000 in Laputta in the Ayeyawaddy division.

The government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it to 3,939 later in the day.

The radio station broadcasting from the country's capital, Naypyitaw, said the situation in the countryside remained unclear because of poor communications and roads left impassable by the storm.

"It's clear that we're dealing with a very serious situation. The full extent of the impact and needs will require an extensive on-the-ground assessment,"said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in Bangkok, Thailand, for United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"What is clear at this point is that there are hundreds of thousands of people in dire need of shelter and clean drinking water," Horsey said.

At a meeting with foreign diplomats and representatives of U.N. and international aid agencies, Myanmar's Foreign Ministry officials said they welcomed international humanitarian assistance and urgently needed roofing materials, plastic sheets and tents, medicine, water purifying tablets, blankets and mosquito nets.

Aid agencies yesterday rushed emergency food and water into the impoverished nation.

People of the main city, Yangon, were busy yesterday clearing roads blocked by fallen trees and queuing to collect water from neighbors with private wells, as supplies were cut by the storm.

"I haven't seen anything like this in my whole life. It will take at least a month to return to normal,"a 70-year-old man said.

Several coastal villages southwest of Yangon were destroyed, according to a preliminary assessment by the International Federation of the Red Cross, its spokesman Michael Annear said.

State media said nearly 98,000 people were homeless on the delta's Haing Gyi island alone, which is home to a navy base.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house in Yangon, where she is under house arrest, was damaged but the Nobel Peace laureate was unhurt, a Myanmar official said.

"Her house was also hit a little but she is safe,"the official said.

The country's infrastructure has been run into the ground by decades of mismanagement by the military, which has ruled since 1962. Myanmar has also suffered more than a decade of U.S. and European sanctions over the continuing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.(SD-Agencies)