Reports continued about the scale of damage inflicted by allied bombing, and the resulting danger of epidemics.

The agency's officials said Tuesday that because there was little danger of epidemics from unburied bodies, immediate mass burials and cremations were not necessary.

The gulf allies say they are ready to send Iraq more humanitarian supplies to relieve suffering and stem the danger of epidemics resulting from polluted water and poor medical services.

The difficulty in recovering the bodies of human victims and the widespread destruction of livestock was rapidly creating the danger of epidemics of cholera, dengue fever and other diseases, they said.

In addition to destroying infrastructures, these floods are causing a shortage of drinking water and food as well as a real danger of epidemics as serious and deadly as the floods themselves.

In the traditional view of sanitation inherited by Baron Haussmann, it was thought that wide, straight tree-lined boulevards cutting through the city would reduce the danger of epidemics by letting healthy air circulate freely.

There is also concern, an official at the Agriculture Ministry said, about the danger of epidemics in Bihar and West Bengal and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Assam states, which have been flooded.

American military officers said the eastward advance would be critical to their efforts to bring an estimated 800,000 Kurdish refugees out of the mountains along the Iraqi-Turkish border before the coming hot weather dries up streams and increases the danger of epidemics.