Bangladesh and Myanmar were hit by Cyclone Mocha on Sunday, which has become the strongest in years, wreaking devastation in Rohingya refugee camps. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated.
Cyclone Mocha, the most powerful in the region in the last decade, hit Bangladesh and Myanmar on Sunday, May 14. It uprooted trees, washed away shelters in camps for displaced Rohingyas and caused a significant tidal wave in coastal areas.
Accompanied by violent winds of up to 195 kilometers per hour, Mocha, classified as category 5 (the highest) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, made landfall between Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where one million refugees live, and Sittwe in Myanmar. , according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Service.
By Sunday night, much of the storm had passed, according to correspondents for the AFP news agency. According to the Indian National Weather Service, it is expected to weaken as it reaches the rugged foothills of Myanmar’s interior.
So far, no victims have been reported.
Between 400 and 500 makeshift shelters have been damaged in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya refugee camps, but no casualties have been reported so far, according to refugee commissioner Mizanur Rahman.
Nearby, in Teknaf, volunteers were removing fallen trees and other obstacles from the roads, according to an AFP correspondent.
Kamrul Hasan, a humanitarian aid official, said the cyclone had not caused “significant damage” in Bangladesh. He claimed that some 750,000 people had been evacuated.
In Sittwe, a coastal city of 150,000 inhabitants, communications were virtually cut off by the cyclone, according to AFP correspondents. Images published on social networks showed streets turned into torrents, while the cyclone ripped off the roofs of buildings and power lines.
Mocha advances into northern Myanmar
On Saturday, thousands of Sittwe residents had fled with their belongings and pets to higher ground as Mocha was expected to cause a tidal wave of about 3.5 metres.
“We are not well. We have not brought food, we have nothing to cook,” Maung Win, 57, who spent the night in Kyauktaw, in the interior of the country, told AFP. “We have to trust people to give us food.”
Residents emerged from their homes in Kyauktaw after the storm to find the streets littered with debris and to begin repairing the damage. The roofs of several buildings were blown off and a power pole fell on a house.
“I am very scared because I have never experienced anything like this,” said Phyu Ma, 51. “I have never seen such a strong wind.”
Myanmar’s ruling military junta issued a statement Sunday night saying Mocha had moved north to Chin state, without giving further details.
Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh, paralyzed
As of Saturday, some 190,000 people had been evacuated from Cox’s Bazar and almost 100,000 from nearby Chittagong, a major seaport where all operations were suspended on Sunday, according to Bangladeshi authorities.
Rohingya refugees were evacuated from “risk zones” while thousands of people fled the Mocha-touched tourist island of Saint Martin, which felled hundreds of trees. “Two people were injured by fallen trees,” said Noor Ahmed, an official on the island.
The Bangladeshi authorities have prohibited the Rohingya from building permanent concrete houses, fearing that this will encourage them to settle permanently, rather than return to Myanmar, the country from which they fled in 2017 after persecution by the army, described as “genocide” by UN experts.
Most of the camps are located on slopes, making them vulnerable to landslides.
“Cyclone Mocha is the strongest storm since Cyclone Sidr,” said Azizur Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
A regular threat
In November 2007, Sidr devastated southwestern Bangladesh, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars worth of damage.
In recent years, improved weather forecasts and more effective evacuations have drastically reduced the number of fatalities from cyclones.
Cyclones, sometimes called Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific typhoons, are a regular threat to the northern Indian Ocean coast, home to tens of millions of people.
In May 2008, Nargis left at least 138,000 people dead or missing in Myanmar, the worst natural disaster in the country’s history.
Scientists have warned that cyclones are becoming more powerful in some parts of the world due to global warming.
AFP
This article was adapted from its original in French.
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