YANGON, MYANMAR - The death toll from a 120-mph cyclone that tore through Myanmar, also known as Burma, last weekend has reached 15,000, with 10,000 killed in just one town, a top official told the nation today.

The ruling junta, an authoritarian regime that cut the nation off from the international community for decades, appealed for foreign aid to help in the recovery from Saturday's disaster.

The casualty count has been rising quickly as authorities reach hard-hit islands and villages in the Irrawaddy delta, the country's major rice-producing region, which bore the brunt of Nargis' 120-mile-per-hour winds.

Bogalay Township was devastated by the storm, with about 10,000 dead, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said today on state television, in a broadcast monitored by the Reuters news service.

He indicated that the country's death toll could climb higher, noting that 3,000 people were still missing. He said the government was still assessing damage in remote villages.

Residents of Yangon, the former capital of 6.5 million, said they were angry the government failed to adequately warn them of the approaching storm and has so far done little to alleviate their plight.

The government apparently made little effort to prepare for the storm, which came bearing down from the Bay of Bengal late Friday. Although warnings were broadcast on television, no guidance was given about taking shelter.

"The government misled people. They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared," said Thin Thin, a grocery store owner.

Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was clearing only streets where the ruling elite reside, while leaving residents, including Buddhist monks, to cope on their own against the huge tangles of uprooted trees.

"There are some army trucks out to clear the roads, but most of the work was done with a dah [a kind of knife] by the people. Some of these tree trunks are 4 feet thick," said Barry Broman, a retired U.S. State Department officer who was in Yangon when the cyclone struck. "Thousands of trees were uprooted. All the roads were blocked by the trees."

If the government's numbers are accurate, the death toll would be the highest from a natural disaster in southeast Asia since the tsunami of December 2004, which killed almost 230,000 people as it devastated coastlines in Indonesia, Thailand and other parts of southeast and south Asia.

In addition to the dead in Myanmar, hundreds of thousands were left homeless and without clean drinking water, said Richard Horsey, a spokesman in Bangkok for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Risks for the junta

Myanmar's appeal for outside assistance was unusual for the country's ruling generals, who have long been suspicious of international organizations and closely controlled their activities. Several agencies, including the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, have limited their presence as a consequence.

Allowing an influx of foreigners could carry risks for the military, injecting unwanted outside influence and giving the aid givers rather than the junta credit for a recovery.

However, keeping out international aid would focus blame squarely on the military should it fail to restore peoples' livelihoods.

Although relief talks with the government were still ongoing, the U.N.'s Horsey said it appeared the U.N. had the "green light" to send in a team to assess the storm's damage as early as today, and would pull out all the stops to send in food, clean water, blankets and plastic sheeting.

In Washington, first lady Laura Bush said the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar had authorized an emergency contribution of $250,000 to help with relief efforts and was prepared to provide more if the government allows a U.S. disaster assistance response team to enter the country to assess needs.

"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path. The response to this cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failures to meet its people's basic needs," she said.

Washington has long been one of the ruling junta's sharpest critics for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

The cyclone came just a week before a crucial referendum on a military-backed constitution, and the government's ineffectual warning system and inefficient effort to recover from it so far, could sway angry voters to reject the charter.

"The combination of the cyclone and the referendum within a few days of each other makes an angry population angrier and vulnerable and makes the political situation more volatile" than it has been since massive pro-democracy demonstrations last September, said Monique Skidmore, a Myanmar expert at Australian National University.