Sittwe, Myanmar: Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh and Myanmar were ordered to evacuate yesterday as a cyclone bore down on coastal areas home to flood-prone refugee camps for victims of sectarian unrest.
The UN warned that more than eight million people could be at risk from Cyclone Mahasen, which is expected to make landfall today or tomorrow near the border between both countries.
In Sri Lanka, seven people were killed and two were missing in floods and mudslides following heavy rain across the country, the disaster management centre said.
Mahasen on the east of the island caused heavy rain in the past two days which triggered flash floods. Five drowned in flooding and two were buried in mudslides. Some 13 people were injured and 115,000 forced to flee flooded homes.
Bangladesh told hundreds of thousands of people living in low-lying areas to move to shelters and Myanmar announced plans to relocate roughly 166,000 people to safety on its northwest coast.
But in Myanmar’s state of Rakhine, many Muslim Rohingya made homeless by communal bloodshed last year said they were too scared to move, reflecting their mistrust of authorities and local Buddhists.
“We could die here. We have no place to go,” said Yu Sut Taw, a Muslim living in a camp on the outskirts of the state capital Sittwe, one of several in Rakhine which are home to about 140,000 people. Illustrating dangers facing some of those who tried to flee, 58 Rohingya were missing after their boat capsized on Monday as they tried to escape by sea to higher ground along the coast.
The cyclone appeared to have lost some of its strength as it churned northwards through the Bay of Bengal, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said late on Tuesday.
But it may bring “life-threatening conditions” for 8.2 million people in northeast India, Bangladesh and Myanmar, it warned.
Around 30 million of Bangladesh’s 153 million people live along the coast, home to camps housing Rohingya.
Mohammed Kamruzzaman, a government magistrate in charge of a camp in the town of Cox’s Bazaar, said they used loudspeakers to warn people of the impending danger. “We’ve stockpiled dry food, kept medical teams and ambulances on standby and shifted the sick and pregnant women to hospitals.”
Authorities in the southeastern city of Chittagong shut garment factories. “I have not seen a cyclone before. I am afraid,” said Manik Mia, one of a group of 25 construction workers who took shelter at the Daksin Patenga School near the Bay of Bengal. “I hope Allah will save us.”
Mahasen was packing winds of up to 88km per hour at its centre and could unleash a storm surge of up to seven feet, said Shamsuddin Ahmed, Deputy Chief of Bangladesh Meteorological Department.
Experts say Bangladesh is better prepared to handle cyclones than authorities in Rakhine, where the military was deployed to oversee the evacuation.
“Some people don’t want to leave. We don’t want to see them die so we will move them under the law of protection from the cyclone,” said Aung Min, Minister of the Myanmar president’s office.
“We will continue to evacuate as many as possible until the last minute when the cyclone hits.”
He said about 27,000 Rohingya had been moved but there was a lack of proper cyclone shelters. “We don’t have any cyclone shelter in Rakhine state. We should have built them there.” Agencies
