The UN World Food Programme (WFP) says it will resume aid flights to cyclone-struck Burma on Saturday.

The body was forced to suspend relief flights on Friday morning after Burma's military government seized tonnes of aid material flown in to help victims of the devastating cyclone.

"The WFP has decided to send in two relief flights as planned tomorrow, while discussions continue with the Government of Burma on the distribution of the food that was flown in today, and not released to WFP," Nancy Roman, WFP's communications director, said in a statement.

"Today, two WFP flights arrived with high-energy biscuits, sufficient to feed 95,000 hungry people in Myanmar.

"Yesterday, WFP airlifted enough high energy biscuits for 21,000 people, most of which has been delivered over the last 24 hours to the hardest-hit areas."

The Burmese government has strongly denied confiscating the aid packages, saying it had taken control of the aid to distribute it itself.

Burma's reluctance to accept aid from the West has significantly hampered the relief effort.

Many aid agencies are still waiting to be granted visas in order to gain access to the country.

The US says it has not yet been given permission to fly aid into Burma - despite earlier reports that it had.

According to the BBC, the British and Japanese governments have both pledged $10m in aid relief.

The US and French governments say they will donate $3m each.

Burmese state media say 22,980 people were killed by Cyclone Nargis but there are fears the figure could rise to 100,000.

A local military official has told reporters around 80,000 people have died in the remote district of Labutta alone.

Burmese troops are pushing into the affected areas but reports say they lack the resources to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.

Meanwhile, survivors are forced to live among thousands of corpses and the risk of disease taking hold is getting worse by the day.

Seventeen Britons in Burma have failed to make contact since the cyclone, the British Foreign Office said on Thursday.

Cyclone Nargis, which brought winds reaching 120mph, struck the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region of the country in the early hours of Saturday (May 3) morning.

The article UN to resume Burma aid flights on Saturday originally appeared on 999 Today