Update: U.N. Reverses Decision; Will Resume Disaster Relief To Myanmar Saturday

Rome, Italy (AHN) - Only hours after the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) suspended disaster relief aid flights to cyclone-stricken Myanmar because the military government there confiscated the food, WFP officials announced aid flights will resume Saturday.

Myanmar's government told the AP that it had only taken control of the aid to distribute it to cyclone-victims itself.

"The World Food Programme has decided to send in two relief flights as planned tomorrow (Saturday)," WFP Director of Public Policy and Communications Nancy E. Roman, said in a statement from Rome.

WFP officials plan to continue to talk to Myanmar's military government about the release of the food flown in Friday that was seized. WFP officials have complained that Myanmar has held up processing visas for its aid workers to enter the country.

Up to 1.5 million people were affected when Cyclone Nagris struck Myanmar last Saturday. Many are homeless and don't have any food or safe drinking water.

Hospitals are filled with victims of the cyclone but doctors don't have adequate supplies to treat them, according to reports by a CNN news crew that managed to get through several checkpoints and travel by river into the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region where bodies still float in salt-water flooded rice paddies.

According to reports an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people were killed by the cyclone.

Many countries have disaster relief supplies loaded on helicopters and are ready to deliver those supplies to victims if Myanmar's repressive military government will let them in. The U.S. was practicing disaster relief drills nearby and also has helicopters loaded and waiting on the decks of several ships. They could land those helicopters in Myanmar with much needed food and other supplies within four hours of receiving approval from the White House.