Myanmar cyclone victim takes solace in new baby

Her husband is missing, but the young mother and her children are safe -crammed into a Buddhist monastery with a leaky roof, along with 150 other survivors, half of them children.

With homes flattened and loved ones missing, the people of Myanmar's coastal heartland have little to take comfort in. Ohn Tay counts herself among the lucky ones -she has a newborn to cradle amid so much death and destruction.

"My baby stays with me here. I try to keep her from getting wet, but it's hard at night when there is no room to move around and when it rains," said the new mother, pointing at the roof, half of it torn away by the storm. The limited area that is protected means that some of the refugees must sleep sitting up.

Cyclone Nargis struck Saturday with a fury not seen before in Myanmar's modern history, unleashing 120-mph winds and 12-foot storm surges that left vast expanses of the densely populated Irrawaddy delta submerged under flood waters.

More than 65,000 people are dead or missing in the region, with fears the death toll will top 100,000. More than a million people have been left homeless.

Kaw Hmu, a town about 60 miles southwest of Yangon, was lucky -there are no confirmed deaths yet, though some residents are missing. People know that in towns not far away, hundreds of people perished. An Associated Press reporting team reached the area Thursday after driving for three hours across rutted roads from the former capital.

When the cyclone struck in the middle of the night, a pregnant Ohn Tay grabbed her son and fled their hut to higher ground.

"The water rose higher and higher. My husband wasn't there, so I carried my son," she said, hugging the boy. Her husband is still missing.

When the winds receded, she found her house completely flattened, like most of her neighbors' homes, and the family's rice field flooded.