SITTWE (Myanmar): The death toll from Cyclone Mocha which barrelled through the Bay of Bengal rose on Monday as contact was slowly restored to western Myanmar, with 29 people reported dead.

Cyclone Mocha made landfall between Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Myanmar’s Sittwe carrying winds of up to 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour, the biggest storm to hit the Bay of Bengal in more than a decade.

The storm had largely passed by late Sunday, sparing the refugee camps housing almost a million Rohingya in Bangladesh, where officials said there had been no deaths.

Twenty four people were killed in Khaung Doke Kar village tract northwest of Sittwe, a Rohingya camp leader told AFP, requesting anonymity due to fear of reprisals from the junta.

Several others were feared missing from the low-lying tract, home to Rohingya villages and IDP camps, he said.

AFP footage from the area showed wooden fishing boats smashed to splinters and piled up near the shore. At least five people were killed in Myanmar and “some residents” were injured, the military junta said in an earlier statement, without giving details.

More than 860 houses and 14 hospitals or clinics had been damaged across the country, it said.

Communications were still patchy on Monday with Rakhine state’s capital Sittwe, home to around 150,000 people and which bore the brunt of the storm according to cyclone trackers.