Cyclone Sitrang Lashes Bangladesh, Kills Nine

By Staff, Agencies

At least nine people have died after Cyclone Sitrang slammed into Bangladesh’s southern coast, snapping communications and power links and destroying houses, officials said.

“Nine people have died, most by trees falling including three from one family in [the eastern district of] Cumilla,” Jebun Nahar, a government official, told AFP news agency.

The cyclone – the equivalent of hurricanes in the Atlantic or typhoons in the west Pacific – made landfall in southern Bangladesh late on Monday but authorities managed to get about a million people to safety before the monster weather system hit.

The cyclone barreled in from the Bay of Bengal early on Monday with winds gusting up to 88km/h and a storm surge of about three meters that flooded low-lying coastal areas.

Power and telephone links have been largely cut and coastal areas plunged into darkness, officials said.

“It was terrible, it looked like the sea was coming to grab us,” Mizanur Rahman, a resident of Bhola district, told Reuters after communications were restored in his neighborhood.

“We spent a sleepless night, all we could do was pray.”

People evacuated from low-lying regions such as remote islands and riverbanks were moved to thousands of multi-storey cyclone shelters, Disaster Management Ministry secretary Kamrul Ahsan told AFP.

“They spent the night in cyclone shelters,” he said.

Heavy rains lashed much of the country, flooding cities such as the capital, Dhaka, Khulna and Barisal – which witnessed 324 millimeters of rainfall on Monday.