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Wednesday November 21, 4:04 PM Troops reach cut off cyclone survivors in Bangladesh Photo: AFP DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh's army said Wednesday it had finally managed to reach most of its cyclone-stricken and isolated southern coast, where millions of people are at risk from starvation and without shelter. Six days after cyclone Sidr smashed in from the Bay of Bengal small amounts of aid were getting through to most places but villagers -- most of whom have lost family members and their livelihoods -- said much more was needed. Furious winds, rain and a six-metre (20-foot) tidal wave swept away everything in their path, obliterating whole villages and killing as many as 10,000 people. The United Nations said 3,447 people were confirmed dead, a further 2,062 reported missing, feared dead and 6,611 injured. Many bodies, washed into sea, are unlikely to be found. Up to four million people in the area, one of the poorest places on the planet, have been left without sufficient food, water, or shelter. "The destruction of houses, roads, trees and crops by the hurricane is unimaginable," the leader of the military-backed government Fakhruddin Ahmed said in a televised address late Tuesday. The country, he said, was facing a "national crisis". Army major Emdadul Islam told AFP that the relief effort was slow going. "We have reached everywhere with relief materials and we are also continuing rescue operations," he said. But he added: "We informed every government, non-government officials and local journalists to inform us if they find any unreached areas where relief materials did not go." Army chief General Moeen U Ahmed has vowed to win the race against starvation. "Not a single man shall die without food as the government has sufficient stock of foodstuffs," General Moeen said during a visit to the area. Bangladeshis are famed for their ability to withstand natural disasters such as cyclones and floods that often hit the low-lying country. But aid agencies said the sheer scale of the destruction -- described by the UN Children's Fund as "beyond all imagination" -- meant a huge relief and reconstruction effort would be needed. Dhaka has received offers of international aid totalling 140 million dollars -- including 100 million from oil-rich Saudi Arabia and 5.1 million from former colonial power Britain. The World Bank said it would additionally provide up to 250 million dollars to help fund initial aid efforts and commence reconstruction. Two US navy ships carrying 3,500 marines and more than 30 helicopters were also expected to arrive in the affected area within days to assist with transporting relief. "Our top-most concern is to keep these hundreds of thousands of poor people alive in the next couple of weeks," said Bangladeshi navy commander Bashir Ahmed, who is supervising the relief and rescue operation in the worst-hit Barguna district. "These people are in desperate need of dried food, drinking water and clothes. If we fail it will be a catastrophe," he said. The scale of the aid operation needs to be huge -- with some 100 kilometres (60 miles) of coastline badly hit. The fishing industry, the mainstay of the coastline's economy, has also been wiped out. "They have now become permanently dependent on food aid. And a majority of them don't even have utensils to cook food," the navy commander added. Villagers on Ashar Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal, said they could not even find worms from the ground to eat. "The last six days we spent cooking rotten rice," Gafur said, showing an AFP correspondent rice that was spoilt by salt water during the tidal wave. "Even the worms in the ground have gone -- they are now buried under tonnes of sand," said resident Chin Teng Maung.