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DHAKA - Four days after cyclone Sidr killed more than 2400 people in Bangladesh, rescuers were struggling to reach isolated areas along the country's devastated coast and give aid to millions of survivors.
"The tragedy unfolds as we walk through one after another devastated village," said relief operator Mohammad Selim in Bagerhat, one of the worst-hit areas. "Often it looks like we are in a valley of death."
Media reports and the chairman of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, Mohammad Abdur Rob, said the death toll had passed 3000, and was likely to go up.
The Government said 2471 people had been confirmed dead.
"We are trying to reach all the affected areas on the vast coastline as soon as possible, when we will know how many people have exactly died in the devastation," one official said.
About three million survivors, who were either evacuated from the low-lying southern coast or whose homes and villages were destroyed, will need support, the Government said.
Aid workers are worried that inadequate supplies of food, drinking water and medicine could lead to outbreaks of disease.
Grieving families begged for clothes to wrap around the bodies of dead relatives for burial.
In some areas, they put corpses in mass graves.
Reports said bodies were being discovered by the hour in the rivers and paddy fields and under piles of debris.
- Reuters
