Cyclone Mocha kills at least 41 in Burma

The toll increases after Cyclone Mocha struck Sunday in western Burma and neighboring Bangladesh. At least 41 people have died in Burma, in villages in Rakhine state, local officials told AFP on Tuesday (May 16th). The previous toll reported five deaths.

“We can confirm that there are 17 dead”reported an administrator of the village of Bu Ma to an AFP journalist on the spot. “There will be other deaths because more than a hundred people are missing”, he added. This figure is added to a count of 24 dead communicated to AFP by a chief of the neighboring locality of Khaung Doke Kar.

Winds of nearly 200 km/h

With winds up to 195 km/h, the biggest storm in more than a decade in the Bay of Bengal hit between Sittwe, Burma, and Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Communications with Sittwe, home to around 150,000 people and which bore the brunt of the storm, according to cyclone tracking sites, are being restored on Tuesday.

In Bangladesh, where authorities claimed to have evacuated 750,000 people, a ministry official told AFP that the cyclone had caused no casualties. In the Rohingya camps, where around a million people live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters, the damage is limited. The risks of landslides in the camps are also low “due to scanty rainfall”.