SITTWE: Contact was slowly being restored on Monday with thousands of people cut off in a big Myanmar port city as the death figure from a cyclone that tore through the western territory and neighbouring Bangladesh rose to at least 5.
Cyclone Mocha made landfall between Sittwe in Myanmar and Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh with gushing winds of up to 195 kilometres per hour, the most severe storm in the Bay of Bengal in over a decade.
The storm had largely reduced by late Sunday, sparing the refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya in Bangladesh, where authorities said there had been no casualties.
At least 5 people were killed in Myanmar, and “some residents” were wounded, the military government said in a statement.
The statement said over 860 houses and fourteen hospitals or clinics had been damaged across the country.
Cyclone closes down communication
Communications were still mostly down with Rakhine state’s capital Sittwe, home to nearly 150,000 people and which bore the brunt of the heavy storm.
Hundreds of people who took shelter on higher ground were returning to the city along a way littered with pylons, trees, and power cables.
A military checkpoint about 10 kilometres outside the city barred cars and vehicles from entering, forcing people to continue their journeys on foot or motorbike.
In Sittwe, power pylons hung low over empty streets and trees still standing were stripped of leaves.
