Stifled by regime, Myanmar cyclone victims suffer in silence

Fishing boats along the coast have helped ferry survivors to safety but can't make enough rounds a day to rescue everyone and the trip is a stomach-wrenching journey, said Maung U, a 36-year-old driver of a rescue boat.

"Each trip takes five or six hours through a narrow waterway littered with dead bodies," he said. "Every few meters (yards), you see another dead body, human or animal."

He said every family has at least two or three missing or dead, and many people had to leave the bodies of their family members in the water or in the fields.

Diesel supplies are running low and rescuers fear that time is running out to help the people stranded in remote delta villages.

"Some have been living on coconuts," he said. "But even those are running out."