Shocked survivors who stumbled half-naked into one town in Myanmar are describing the horrors of last Saturday's cyclone and its aftermath.

One man said he was stranded in the top of an 18-foot-tall coconut tree as the wind and rain raged around him. He said he doesn't know what has happened to his wife and children.

Others said they used blankets as sails as they steered rickety boats around the bloated corpses of water buffaloes and dead neighbors floating in the murky waters.

Another man said his "entire village was wiped out" and that he's the only survivor from a family of 11.

More than 60,000 people are dead or missing in Myanmar's densely populated delta. Some fear that number could reach as many as 100,000 people.

The U.N. and other agencies said Wednesday they're making progress in getting Myanmar's government to let in more disaster relief experts, to help get aid to those who need it most in the aftermath of the cyclone.

But U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging the government to speed the arrival of aid workers and relief supplies "in every way possible."

Operations have been hampered by the Myanmar government's delay in issuing visas to aid workers.

The U.N.'s World Food Program said four flights carrying food and other supplies will arrive in Yangon Thursday morning. They're the first U.N. flights to reach the country since the devastating cyclone hit on Saturday.

Myanmar state television said planeloads of supplies have arrived from Japan, Bangladesh, India, China and other countries.

Diplomat Says Toll May Top 100,000

A U.S. diplomat in Myanmar said 100,000 people may have died in the cyclone, a sharp increase of the number of deaths reported by Myanmar's media, which estimates the number at about 22,000 dead and 41,000 missing.

Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, said the country is dealing with "a major, major disaster" and predicted that the death toll could rise dramatically.

He said aid workers describe "bodies floating around in the water," and survivors rigging blankets as makeshift sails on boats in desperate attempts to reach dry land.

Hungry crowds stormed the few shops that opened in the country's stricken Irrawaddy River delta, sparking fistfights, according to Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program in neighboring Thailand.

Shari Villarosa, who heads the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar, said food and water are running short in the delta area and called the situation there "increasingly horrendous."

The humanitarian group Save the Children has distributed food, shelter, cooking and water purification utensils in Yangon area.

Relief teams and aid material are waiting to deploy from Thailand, Singapore, Italy, France, Sweden, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Israel, U.S., Poland and Japan, according to minutes from a U.N. relief meeting in Geneva that were obtained by the AP.

The price of bottled water, rice and cooking oil in Myanmar has soared since the weekend storm.

President George W. Bush has urged Myanmar to let U.S. experts join the recovery effort. Washington was prepared to use the U.S. Navy to help search for the dead and missing, he said. The U.S. has pledged more than $3 million in aid, and Bush said the U.S. wants to do "a lot more."

However, the president said Myanmar's leaders aren't letting a U.S. disaster team into the country.

White House aides said the team is standing by in Thailand.

"We still are prepared and stand ready to provide assistance if Burma should request it and permit access," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

The Pentagon has identified a number of resources that could be tapped to assist the Burmese, including aircraft carriers and other U.S. Navy vessels that are posted in and around the region, Whitman said. U.S. Air Force cargo aircraft that can fly in food and clean water also are available, he said.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is an eastern-Asian nation on the Bay of Bengal that's sandwiched among neighbors India, China and Thailand. It is slightly smaller than Texas, but with 58 million residents it has nearly double the population, according to U.S. State Department and U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

The U.S. Navy has three ships in the Gulf of Thailand, including the USS Essex, which boasts 23 helicopters, 1,800 Marines and five amphibious landing craft, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon also has some U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo aircraft in the region that could be employed in any humanitarian mission for Burma, Whitman said.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962 and its government has been widely criticized for suppressing pro-democracy parties.

At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained in September when the military cracked down on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.