Emergency teams raced to rescue cyclone survivors in the remote southwest of Bangladesh yesterday as the death toll from the storm rose to 180.
Cyclone Aila slammed into the coast of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal on Monday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless after a tidal surge washed away villages, roads and livestock.
Military and civil relief workers struggled to deliver food, fresh water and shelters to regions worst affected by the surge of sea water and destructive high winds, authorities in Dhaka said.
PHOTO: AP
About 110 people were killed in Bangladesh and 70 more died in India, officials said.
Bangladesh’s disaster management minister Abdur Razzak said conditions on the ground were desperate but that a major relief and rescue operation was in full swing.
“We have adequate resources to ensure food, relief and rehabilitation, and we’ll work for as long as it takes to reach those affected,” Razzak said.
In India’s West Bengal, the cyclone hit the state capital of Kolkata, bringing down trees and electricity pylons and smashing cars.
About 20 of those killed died a day after the storm in mudslides caused by rainfall in the hill resort Darjeeling, the state’s chief secretary Asoke Mohon Chakraborty said.
“The cyclone traveled through northern districts of the state and heavy downpours triggered over 40 landslides on Tuesday,” he said.
Chakraborty said that he expected further fatalities to be reported as relief workers reached outlying villages.
The storm caused havoc in the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and home to several protected species of tigers.
Conservationists have been unable to confirm if the animals had been affected in the forest, which straddles India and Bangladesh.
“Many islands and a large swath of the mangrove forest in the Sundarbans are still under water,” Chakraborty said. “We have been dropping food to marooned people by helicopter.”
In Bangladesh, at least 250,000 people were stranded in the hard-hit districts of Koyra and Dakope.
“People are half-fed or not fed at all. There is a huge crisis with no drinking water as all the wells and ponds are submerged by salty seawater,” Koyra chief Arif Pasha told reporters by telephone. “In some places there is no dry land for a proper air drop.”
In Dakope, in the heart of the Sundarbans, 100,000 people remained in the cyclone shelters where they took refuge as the storm hit.
Many of the casualties in Bangladesh were children. In one village in Satkhira district, a dam burst and 23 people were swept out to sea and drowned, officials said.
The low-lying region frequently experiences tropical storms and cyclones during the monsoon season.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS