New Delhi - The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday said it had given Myanmar 48 hours warning before cyclone Nargis smashed into the South-East Asian country claiming more than 22,500 lives.

The IMD had been monitoring the depression in the Bay of Bengal after it was first detected on April 26 and was issuing regular advisories to neighbouring Myanmar since then, cyclone director M Mahapatra said.

The IMD is a Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre (RSMC) which is mandated by the UN's World Meteorological Organization to issue cyclone warnings to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Oman and Pakistan.

"The system had intensified into a cyclone on April 28. Forty-eight hours before it struck, we had informed about its landfall, movement and severity such as wind speed of 180 kilometres per hour, to the Myanmarese authorities," Mahapatra said.

"We were more or less correct in our assessment and warnings. There was ample time to take precautionary measures to save lives," he added.

The Myanmar government has said that more than 22,500 people were killed after the cyclone slammed into the country on Saturday. Some 41,000 people remained missing in the aftermath of the storm, deemed the worst disaster to hit South-East Asia since the December 2004 tsunami.

The comments by the IMD come in the backdrop of US allegations that Myanmar's military regime failed to warn citizens of the cyclone.

"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," US Fist Lady Laura Bush had said on Monday referring to Myanmar by its former name of Burma. (dpa)