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Background: Supplies and men for the flood victims of East Pakistan boarded Royal Air Force Hercules transport at an air base in Britain as part of the world-wide effort to bring relief to the disaster-stricken Bay of Bengal region.

Among the urgently-needed supplies being loaded on Saturday (21 November) were rubber boats. The rubber boats are one of the few ways in which relief goods can be brought into the island-dotted Bay of Bengal coast of East Pakistan which makes up some of the worst-hit areas.

Also part of the Royal Air Force airlift on Saturday were elements of the Royal Marines who will man some of the equipment and are used to the special handling characteristics of the small boats.

Until only recently, the main problem of relief for the victims of the twin cyclone and tidal wave disaster which hit East Pakistan last week has been the bringing of supplies from Dacca where they have been piling up to the devastated areas along the coast. Helicopters are now arriving which can distribute relief supplies more effectively than the faster long-range transport flying into Dacca.

Helicopters have been arriving from Britain and the United States and a sea-borne British relief force is steaming from Singapore and is expected to arrive in the area by Tuesday (24 November).

The distribution problem is made more acute as the threat from cholera, starvation and typhoid grows among the survivors.

The death toll in the Bay of Bengal area is now officially put at 166,000, but relief commissioner Abu Mohammed Anizuzzaman agreed that the toll could run into hundreds of thousands when the final bleak picture emerges.