DPA
Dhaka
The powerful category five Cyclone mocha caused severe devastation in coastal areas of Myanmar and Bangladesh on Sunday with wind speeds of more than 250 kilometres per hour.
It was the strongest cyclone to hit the region in more than a decade. The full extent of the damage is only slowly becoming clear because most communication links to the coastal areas have been cut.
Aid organization Oxfam on Monday said that it was constantly receiving reports of destruction from new areas.
“Some towns look like lakes, in some villages there are no houses left,” said Min Thein, a resident of the hard-hit Rakhine state on the west coast of former Burma.
In both countries, hundreds of thousands of people were taken to temporary shelters as a precaution which saved many lives, said Oxfam.
According to the British aid organization, at least eight people died in Myanmar and no victims have yet been reported in Bangladesh.
Although Cyclone mocha did not make landfall at the sprawling refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar as expected, it still destroyed hundreds of makeshift shelters. The crisis-ridden country of Myanmar has been engulfed in chaos and violence since a military coup two years ago. More than a million people are already living as displaced people in their country, often in makeshift camps.
Rajan Khosla, Oxfam director in Myanmar, said the storm was having a “huge impact” on the lives of internally displaced people.
“We call on the international community to provide the necessary means to enable them to live in dignity,” Khosla said.
