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UN seeks $333M emergency funding for Cyclone Mocha relief in Myanmar

The appeal comes after the UN's food agency says lack of funding has forced it to cut food aid for around one million Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh for the second time in three months.

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Myanmar's junta has given a death toll of 148 people, mostly from the persecuted Rohingya minority in western Rakhine state.

The United Nations has launched an appeal for $333 million in emergency funding for 1.6 million people it said were affected after deadly Cyclone Mocha tore through Myanmar.

The UN's humanitarian affairs office said on Tuesday that it was seeking $333 million to help provide shelter, medical facilities, food and clean water ahead of the rainy season.

"We are now in a race against time to provide people with safe shelter in all affected communities and prevent the spread of water-borne disease," Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Ramanathan Balakrishnan said in a statement.

More than $200 million would come from the overall humanitarian aid plan for this year in Myanmar, the statement added, with $122 million sought to support new relief efforts for those affected by the cyclone.

Balakrishnan later told reporters the United Nations was hoping to receive approval soon to distribute relief to communities in Rakhine.

The appeal comes after the UN's food agency said on Monday that lack of funding had forced it to cut food aid for around one million Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh for the second time in three months.

In Bangladesh, officials said that no one had died in the cyclone, which passed close to sprawling refugee camps that now house almost one million Rohingya.

Cyclone Mocha: Over 400 dead, thousands in need of aid in Myanmar's Rakhine

Hundreds dead

Myanmar's junta has given a death toll of 148 people, mostly from the persecuted Rohingya minority in western Rakhine state.

Mocha brought lashing rain and winds of 195 kilometres per hour to Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh on May 14, collapsing buildings and turning streets into rivers.

The state is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, many of whom live in displacement camps following decades of ethnic conflict.

A military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh, with harrowing stories emerging of murder, rape and arson.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who was head of the army during the 2017 crackdown, has dismissed the term Rohingya as "imaginary".