Residents search for their belongings amid the rubble of huts that collapsed after a cyclonic storm hit Chittagong on Monday. -AFP
Chittagong: Twenty-four people were killed when Bangladesh was hit by a cyclonic storm on Monday night, forcing nearly one million people to be evacuated from their homes.
Cyclone Sitang made landfall in southern Bangladesh late Monday, but officials managed to save nearly a million people before the monster weather system hit.
About 10 million people were without electricity in the coastal districts of the country on Tuesday, while most schools in the south remained closed.
Police and government officials said 24 people died, mostly from falling trees, on the Jamuna River in the north when two people died when their boat sank in bad weather.
An official said a Myanmarese also died after falling from the deck.
The head of the regional fire department, Abdullah Pasha, said that a dredging boat was overturned by strong winds in the Bay of Bengal late on Monday night, leaving eight people missing. Divers were searching for survivors
He said about 10,000 homes were either "destroyed or damaged" in the storm and around 1,000 shrimp farms were inundated.
Last year, more than a million people were evacuated from India's east coast due to Cyclone Yass's gusting winds of 155 kph.
Cyclone Amphan, another "super cyclone" that hit the Bay of Bengal in 2020, killed over 100 people in Bangladesh and India and affected millions.
However, in the past few years, the death toll from hurricanes has come down significantly due to better forecasting and more effective evacuation plans.
The worst ever recorded was in 1970, killing thousands.
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News Source : Dawn