DPA
Dhaka/Bangkok
Cyclone Mocha took the lives of at least 400 people in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and caused severe damage there, officials said on Tuesday.
“It really is a nightmare scenario,” said Ramanathan Balakrishnan, the UN relief coordinator in Myanmar.
Mocha was the strongest cyclone to hit the region in more than a decade and its impact was especially felt in Rakhine, a state on the western coast which is home to Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
According to Balakrishnan, the cyclone struck the poorest parts of the country, which were already affected by the coronavirus pandemic, domestic conflict and economic problems.
“Now they are also on the front line of the climate crisis,” he said, referring to the increasingly frequent weather extremes observed in the wake of climate change.
Most of those killed were Rohingya, a spokesman for Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government told DPA. The National Unity Government was formed after Myanmar’s 2021 military coup as an alternative to the ruling junta.
It warned people about the cyclone in advance and has worked to organize international aid for the victims. The tropical cyclone made landfall in Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh on Sunday with wind speeds of more than 250 kilometres per hour in some places. The full extent of the damage, however, is only slowly becoming clear due to widespread cuts to communication lines.
The Irrawaddy news website reported hundreds of deaths in Rohingya camps around the city of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State. Many were said to have drowned or were hit by falling trees.
