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Cyclone Mahasen moves across Bangladeshi coast Cyclone Mahasen strikes Bangladeshi coast
(about 2 hours later)
Cyclone Mahasen has begun crossing Bangladesh's low-lying coast, bearing down on the ports of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar. Cyclone Mahasen has struck the southern coast of Bangladesh, lashing remote fishing villages with heavy rain and fierce winds that flattened mud and straw huts and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million people.
Tens of thousands of people have fled to shelters to hope for protection from the storm, which the United Nations says threatens 4.1 million people. The main section of the storm reached land Thursday and immediately began weakening, according to Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. However, its forward movement was also slowing, meaning that towns in its path would have to weather the storm for longer, he said.
Winds of up to 60mph (100km/h) lashed the coast and whipped up waves, with a predicted 2.1m storm surge and heavy rain expected to cause widespread flooding. "It started to cross and is approaching towards Chittagong and Cox's Bazar coasts," said a Bangladesh meteorological department official. Even before the brunt of the storm hit, at least 18 deaths related to Mahasen were reported in Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka.
The storm first hit Khepupara on Bangladesh's southern coast and was moving north-east towards the two ports on the eastern coastline near Burma. Witnesses said low-lying coastal areas were covered in waist-deep water as the storm crossed. Trees were uprooted and houses damaged. The storm could bring life-threatening conditions to about 8.2 million people in Bangladesh, Burma and north-east India, according to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Two people were reported killed, one crushed by a falling tree and another as he made his way to a shelter. Bangladesh raised its storm warning to seven, on a scale with a maximum of 10, as Mahasen approached one of the poorest countries in Asia. Danger was particularly high for tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people living in plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds in dozens of refugee camps along Burma's western coast.
The storm killed at least seven people and displaced 3,881 in Sri Lanka as it moved across the Bay of Bengal towards Bangladesh. A boat carrying Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Burma capsized at around midnight on Monday after hitting rocks off Pauktaw in Rakhine state while evacuating ahead of the storm. Driven from their homes by violence, members of the Muslim minority group refused to follow evacuation orders. Many distrust officials in the majority-Buddhist country, where Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination.
Official media said 42 people were rescued but 58 were missing. "The government has ordered the evacuation of about one million people from 15 coastal districts," said the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "As per the latest storm trajectory, 4.1 million people have been identified as living in at risk areas in the districts of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar," it said in its latest update. UN officials, hoping they would inspire greater trust, fanned out across the area to encourage people to leave.
The port in Chittagong, which has a population of about three million, and the airport in Cox's Bazar were closed on Wednesday. Meteorologists said Mahasen should weaken quickly into a tropical rain depression over land. "Mudslides will also be a concern as the heavy rain spreads farther north and east on Thursday night and Friday into easternmost India and northern Myanmar," said meteorologists at Accuweather.com. Early on Thursday, the cyclone battered the southern Bangladesh fishing village of Khepurpara along the Bay of Bengal with 62mph (100km/h) winds and was heading east toward the city of Chittagong and the seafront resort town of Cox's Bazar. River ferries and boat services were suspended, and scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed. The military said it was keeping 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.
Bangladesh has more than 1,400 cyclone-proof buildings on standby but across its eastern border in Burma tens of thousands of people on the coast were sheltering in makeshift camps and huts made of timber and palm fronds. In 2008 cyclone Nargis killed up to 140,000 people in Burma's Irrawaddy delta, south of the main city, Rangoon. Tens of thousands of people fled their shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, schools, government office buildings and some of the 300 hotels in Cox's Bazar to wait out the storm. Some brought their livestock, which took shelter outside.
At a camp near the sea on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, several people told Reuters on Wednesday they would rather perish in the storm than evacuate. "We arrived here last year because of the clashes between Rakhine and Muslims. I lost everything. Both my mother and my two young daughters died," said Hla Maung, 38, a Muslim. "We have seen such a disaster before," said Mohammad Abu Taleb, who shut down his convenience shop in the city of 200,000. "It's better to stay home. I'm not taking any chance."
"If the cyclone hits here I will pray to Allah. Everyone here wants to die in the storm because we lost everything last year." A 1991 cyclone that hit Bangladesh killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Burma's southern delta was devastated Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people.
Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Cyclone Mahasen, which is rated category 1 – the weakest level
But heavy rain and storm surge could prove deadlier than the wind. Bangladesh's meteorological office said the cyclone was moving so slowly it may take a whole day for it to pass the Bangladesh coast.
The Bangladesh ministry of disaster management said more than 1 million people had been evacuated from coastal areas. Television stations reported the deaths of two men, one of whom was crushed by a tree uprooted by the wind.
Related heavy rains and flooding in Sri Lanka were blamed for eight deaths earlier this week. At least eight people and possibly many more were killed in Burma as they fled the cyclone on Monday night, when overcrowded boats carrying more than 100 Rohingya capsized. Only 43 people had been rescued by Thursday, and more than 50 Rohingya were still missing.
India's meteorological department forecast damage to the north-eastern states of Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland, and advised fishermen off the west coast of the country to be cautious for the next 36 hours.
Much attention was focused on western Burma because of the crowded, low-lying camps where many Rohingya remain.
In Rakhine state, around 140,000 people – mostly Rohingya – have been living in the camps since last year, when two outbreaks of sectarian violence between the Muslim minority and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists forced many Rohingya from their homes.
Nearly half the displaced live in coastal areas considered highly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding.
"Pack and leave," a Rakhine state official, U Hla Maung, warned as he walked through a camp near Sittwe, the state capital. Accompanied by more than a dozen soldiers and riot police, he suggested that people living there move to a nearby railroad embankment, then left without offering help.
Some Rohingya took down their tents and hauled their belongings away in cycle-rickshaws, or carried them in bags balanced on their heads.
"Now we're afraid.  … We decided to move early this morning," said U Kwaw Swe, a 62-year-old father of seven who was hoping the government would transport his family. Otherwise they intended to walk to safety.
Ko Hla Maung, an unemployed fisherman, was among those who had not left as of Thursday morning.
"We have no safe place to move, so we're staying here, whether the storm comes or not," he said. " … The soldiers want to take us to a village closer to the sea, and we're not going to do that.  … If the storm is coming, then that village will be destroyed."
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