Myanmar, Bangladesh begin cleaning up, counting casualties
Bangkok: Recovery efforts were underway Tuesday in Myanmar and Bangladesh after a powerful cyclone smashed into their coastlines, causing widespread destruction and at least 21 deaths, with hundreds of others believed missing.
Myanmar took the brunt of Cyclone Mocha on Sunday, while Bangladesh was spared a feared catastrophe.
Residents of Myanmar’s Rakhine state worked to repair the damage and mourn the dead. Areas further inland also suffered damage, including the central city of Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was Myanmar’s capital 10 centuries ago.
Mocha made landfall near Sittwe township in Rakhine state with winds of up to 209 kilometers (130 miles) per hour on Sunday afternoon, weakening to a tropical depression by midday Monday. The storm, the nation’s most destructive in a decade, brought widespread flash floods and power outages, while high winds tore roofs off buildings and crumpled cellphone towers.
Myanmar state-run television MRTV said Tuesday that 21 people were killed and 11,532 houses, 73 religious buildings, 47 monasteries, 163 schools, 29 hospitals and clinics and 112 government buildings were damaged.
Independent media said hundreds more people were believed missing. Many of those reported dead or unaccounted for had been living in ramshackle displacement camps that were reportedly heavily damaged by the storm surge. The camps house members of the Muslim Rohingya minority who lost their homes in a brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign led by Myanmar security forces. Aid agency presence is spotty and help from the country’s military government negligible.
It is difficult to confirm the extent of casualties and damage because telecommunication facilities in
the area were damaged by the storm’s high winds. Information is hard to obtain even in normal times because the military restricts the media.
Sahat Khasin, a Rohingya who does relief work at one of the camps, said by phone he helped bury 11 bodies at a Muslim cemetery near Sittwe, Rakhine’s state capital on the Bay of Bengal.He said the authorities warned people in the camps to evacuate to safer places in advance of the cyclone’s arrival, but some waited until seawater began pouring in. Video from Sittwe on Tuesday showed extensive damage to buildings as well as uprooted trees and fallen power lines.Heavy rain in Bagan, the ancient city that is one of Myanmar’s major tourist attractions, caused flooding that weakened the foundations of at least four temples. MRTV reported that the head of Myanmar’s military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, visited Tuesday to inspect the damage,
The government issued disaster declarations for 17 townships in Rakhine and four in Chin state, north of Rahkine, where hundreds of buildings were reported damaged.
Rohingya are not recognized as an official minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they face widespread discrimination and are denied citizenship and other basic rights.
