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YANGON, Myanmar - Police barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in hard-hit areas Tuesday, while emergency food shipments backed up at the main airport for Myanmar's biggest city.

Some survivors were reportedly being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors.

The reports reinforced fears that the ruling military junta in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country also known as Burma, could be misappropriating assistance.

UN officials warned that the threat was escalating for the two million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.

Ten days after the tempest, reaching the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult.

Checkpoints manned by armed police were set up Tuesday on roads leading to the Irrawaddy River delta, and all international aid workers and journalists were turned back by officers who took down their names and passport numbers. Drivers were interrogated.

"No foreigners allowed," one policeman said after waving a car back.

Supplies piled up at Yangon's main airport, which has equipment to lift cargo off Boeing 747s. It took 200 volunteers to unload by hand a plane carrying more than 60 tonnes of relief supplies, including school tents, said Dubai Cares, a United Arab Emirates aid group.

A report from a Tuesday meeting of the UN centre overseeing logistics said the airport was a bottleneck in the aid effort.

"Discharging operations at Yangon airport are hampered by limitations of handling equipment, fuel availability and worsening weather conditions," it said.

The report said Britain's Department for International Development had offered to send in machinery for unloading jumbo jets and other aircraft.

With rain falling on Yangon on Tuesday and downpours predicted later this week, aid officials also said there was not enough warehouse space to protect the supplies beginning to flow in after the regime agreed to accept foreign help.