KYAUKTAW (Myanmar): Cyclone Mocha crashed through Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, sparing sprawling refugee camps but bringing a storm surge to swathes of western Myanmar where communications were largely cut off. Mocha made landfall between Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Myanmar’s Sittwe packing winds of up to 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour, in the biggest storm to hit the Bay of Bengal in over a decade.
By late Sunday the storm had largely passed, AFP correspondents said, and India’s weather office said it would weaken as it hit the rugged hills of Myanmar’s interior.
Some 400-500 makeshift shelters were damaged in camps housing almost one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar but there were no immediate reports of casualties, refugee commissioner Mizanur Rahman told AFP.
In Teknaf in Bangladesh volunteers emerged to remove fallen trees and other obstacles from the roads, an AFP correspondent said.
Disaster official Kamrul Hasan said the cyclone had caused “no major damage” in Bangladesh, adding authorities had evacuated 750,000 people ahead of the storm. Communications with the port town of Sittwe in Myanmar were largely cut off following the storm, AFP correspondents said.
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