Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Khmer Daily Cambodia News
34 °c
Phnom Penh
  • LATEST
  • CAMBODIA
  • ASIA
    • JAPAN
    • SOUTH KOREA
    • TAIWAN
  • WORLD
    • CHINA
    • RUSSIA
  • BUSINESS CAMBODIA
  • TECHNOLOGY
No Result
View All Result
  • LATEST
  • CAMBODIA
  • ASIA
    • JAPAN
    • SOUTH KOREA
    • TAIWAN
  • WORLD
    • CHINA
    • RUSSIA
  • BUSINESS CAMBODIA
  • TECHNOLOGY
No Result
View All Result
The Khmer Daily
No Result
View All Result
Home ASIA India

Cyclone kills 14 in India, Bangladesh leaving trail of destruction

May 21, 2020
in ASIA, India
0
Cyclone kills 14 in India, Bangladesh leaving trail of destruction
0
SHARES
11
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

KOLKATA/DHAKA – A powerful cyclone pounded eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, killing at least 14 people and destroying thousands of homes, officials said, leaving authorities struggling to mount relief efforts amid a surging coronavirus outbreak.

The populous Indian state of West Bengal took the brunt of Cyclone Amphan, which barrelled out of the Bay of Bengal with gusting winds of up to 185 km per hour (115 mph) and a storm surge of around five metres.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said at least 10 people had died in the state, and two districts been completely battered by one of the strongest storms to hit the region in several years.

“Area after area has been devastated. Communications are disrupted,” Banerjee said, adding that although 500,000 people had been evacuated, state authorities had not entirely anticipated the ferocity of the storm.

With rains continuing, she said the hardest hits areas were not immediately accessible. Federal authorities said they could only make a proper assessment of the destruction on Thursday morning.

“We are facing greater damage and devastation than the Covid-19,” Banerjee said, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has so far killed 250 people in the state.

In West Bengal’s capital city, Kolkata, strong winds upturned cars and felled trees and electricity poles. Parts of the city were plunged into darkness.

An official in the adjoining Hooghly district said thousands of mud homes were damaged by raging winds.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least four people were killed, officials said, with power supplies cut off in some districts.

Authorities there had shifted around 2.4 million people to more than 15,000 storm shelters this week. Bangladeshi officials also said they had moved hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, living on a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, to shelter.

But officials said they feared that standing crops could be damaged and large tracts of fertile land in the densely-populated country washed away.

“Fortunately, the harvesting of the rice crop has almost been completed. Still it could leave a trail of destruction,” said Mizanur Rahman Khan, a senior official in the Bangladesh agriculture ministry.

Cyclones frequently batter parts of eastern India and Bangladesh between April and December, often forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands and causing widespread damage.

Surge and high tide

Surging waters broke through embankments surrounding an island in Bangladesh’s Noakhali district, destroying more than 500 homes, local official Rezaul Karim said.

“We could avoid casualties as people were moved to cyclone centres earlier,” Karim said.

Embankments were also breached in West Bengal’s Sundarban delta, where weather authorities had said the surge whipped up by the cyclone could inundate up to 15 km inland.

The ecologically-fragile region straddling the Indian-Bangladesh border is best known for thick mangrove forests that are a critical tiger habitat, and is home to around 4 million people in India.

On the Sundarbans’ Ghoramara island, resident Sanjib Sagar said several embankments surrounding settlements had been damaged, and some flooding had started.

“A lot of houses have been damaged,” he told Reuters by phone.

Anamitra Anurag Danda, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank who has extensively studied the Sundarbans, said that embankments across the area may have been breached.

“The cyclone surge coincided with the new moon high tides. It is devastation in the coastal belt,” he said.

For the latest updates on the coronavirus, visit here.

This article was first published in Asia One . All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.

Tags: #BANGLADESH#Cyclones#india
Previous Post

Bali named among top post-pandemic destinations

Next Post

TADA, ride-hailing service in Cambodia, completes Series A funding

Related Posts

Duterte leaves brutal legacy in term marked by drug war, US-China policy U-turns

Duterte leaves brutal legacy in term marked by drug war, US-China policy U-turns

by Raissa Robles
June 27, 2022
0
15

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's six-year tenure has been marked by his US-China policy flip-flops and ambitious infrastructure plans, but it...

Cambodia’s Pailin Province aims to attract more tourists with Otavao Waterfall attraction

Cambodia’s Pailin Province aims to attract more tourists with Otavao Waterfall attraction

by Khmer Times
June 27, 2022
0
19

Pailin Province continues efforts to build and strengthen its tourism sector through clean-up and development projects in the province. The...

Villagers cheer Indonesian for capturing big crocodile with just a rope

Villagers cheer Indonesian for capturing big crocodile with just a rope

by AsiaOne
June 27, 2022
0
21

JAKARTA - Fellow villagers have praised an Indonesian man for capturing a crocodile longer than four metres (13 ft) on the island...

© 2020 By Khmer Daily News

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Latest
  • Cambodia
  • ASIA
  • World
  • Business
  • Tech

© 2019 The Khmer Daily.

error: Content is protected !!