By FARID HOSSAIN
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 24, 2007; 12:53 AM
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- The U.S. Navy made final preparations Saturday for an operation to deliver much-needed food and medical supplies to hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis stricken by Cyclone Sidr, a U.S. official said.
The USS Kearsarge, carrying about 20 helicopters and relief supplies, was docked off the country's coast as naval officers made arrangements to deliver aid possibly as early as Sunday to remote villages cut off by the storm.
Authorities and aid workers have warned that the South Asian country faces acute food shortages after Sidr ravaged crops and destroyed infrastructure across a large swath of the country.
"The program is starting today," U.S. embassy spokeswoman Amy Vrampas said Saturday. "We're ramping up and they're getting their team in place."
"The actual operations will probably start tomorrow but that's not clear," Vrampas added.
The Kearsarge arrived Thursday, and Adm. Timothy Keating said a second ship, the USS Essex, would arrive in the coming days.
"We are here to help the people in their time of need," Keating, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific Ocean, told reporters.
About 300 members from a small Islamic group, Hizbut Tahrir, briefly demonstrated in Dhaka on Friday against the arrival of the ships, saying they were a threat to Bangladesh's security.
"Go back! We don't want the warships," shouted the protesters at the city's largest state-run mosque after Friday prayers. A contingent of riot police stopped them from pouring into the streets.
Officers from the Kearsarge spent most of Friday meeting with Bangladeshi military commanders to coordinate the operation, which will include a survey of the ravaged zone to pinpoint the neediest areas, U.S. officials said.
In addition to food shortages, the need for clean water was becoming critical to ward off cholera and severe diarrhea because many drinking water wells destroyed by the cyclone.
U.S. medical teams have already begun distributing water purification tablets in the stricken zones to prevent outbreaks of waterborne diseases, according to Geeta Pasi, the top U.S. diplomat in Dhaka.
"All the ponds and reservoirs were contaminated when the storm surge rolled over the area," said Selim Mollah, a villager in a battered district near the Sunderbans mangrove forest.
"I have lost eight members of my family," she said. "We are not getting any drinking water anywhere."
The United Nations allocated another $14.7 million in emergency response fund, much of which will go toward providing fresh water, a U.N. news release said Saturday.
Bangladesh had already received pledges of international aid of $450 million, including $250 million from the World Bank, Food and Disaster Management secretary Mohammad Ayub Mia said Thursday after a meeting with donors.
The government has also pledged to feed more than two million people left destitute by the storm, which killed more than 3,000.
But since the Nov. 15 storm hit southwestern Bangladesh, officials and relief agencies have struggled to get desperately needed rice, drinking water and tents to remote villages cut off when rain and winds washed out roads.
The government has promised to distribute 33 pounds of rice per month to each of the estimated 2.5 million people in need, many of them in crowded relief camps, starting Dec. 1, said Tapan Chowdhoury, the government's adviser on food and disaster management. The program will last at least four months, he said.
Kelly Stevenson, the Bangladesh director of Save the Children, said the charity estimates that 50 to 90 percent of the region's rice crop has been destroyed, leaving up to 3 million people at risk of food shortages over the next six months.
But in the short term, aid workers were struggling to get supplies to the devastated coastal region, where shortages have led to fistfights among survivors.
"Thousands of families are facing the real possibility of a second wave of death that can result from lack of clean water, food, shelter and medical supplies," said Stevenson.
The official death toll stood at 3,199, said Lt. Col. Main Ullah Chowdhury, spokesman for the army. The Disaster Management Ministry said 1,724 people were missing and 28,188 people had been injured. It said the cyclone destroyed 458,804 houses and partially damaged another 665,529.
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Associated Press writers Parveen Ahmed in Dhaka and Tofayel Ahmed in Cox's Bazar contributed to this report.