At least 106 dead after storm slams Bangladeshi, Indian coasts
Pastor Dale Morgan
At least 106 dead after storm slams Bangladeshi, Indian coasts*
DHAKA, Sept 22 (AFP) Sep 22, 2006
A violent storm that pounded the Bay of Bengal and moved inland has
killed at least 106 people along India and Bangladesh's coastal regions,
state media and officials said Friday.
Some 46 bodies were recovered in Bangladesh coastal districts, the
official BSS news agency said, while hundreds more fishermen were still
missing after powerful winds and torrential monsoon rains lashed the
region on the weekend.
"Due to the bad weather we have still not been able to send boats out
into the Bay of Bengal," said coast guard commander Mohammed Badruddoza.
Officials said they hoped many missing fishermen were sheltering on
islands or in the myriad of rivers criss-crossing the Sunderbans
mangrove forest on the Bay of Bengal coast, and which straddles the
India-Bangladesh border.
"We won't know how many have died until the fishermen who survived come
back to their landing stations," Red Cross official Shamsul Alam said.
Some 500 people also had their homes destroyed after the storm hit the
southern Bangladesh island of Hatia.
In the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, where the storm slammed into
the coast destroying mud houses and downing trees and utility poles, the
death toll rose to 29.
Tens of thousands of people have also been shifted out of the way of
rising flood waters, officials said.
And 22 people were still missing and feared dead after a crowded ferry
capsized on Thursday in the rain-swollen Haldi river which runs into the
Bay of Bengal, Coast Guard commander Gurupdesh Singh said.
Rescuers saved 78 people but "heavy rains are hampering the rescue
operation," he said.
Hundreds of people were still marooned in the villages of the
Sunderbans, a state minister overseeing the rescue operation told AFP by
telephone.
"More than 50,000 people have been evacuated and taken to safer places.
Flood waters continue to rise in several villages in the islands of the
mangrove forest," Sunderbans Development Minister Kanti Ganguly said.
Large areas of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, were under water as
rains lashed the sprawling city of 12 million people.
Further south in India's Andhra Pradesh state, at least 31 people were
killed in flooding from heavy monsoon rains triggered by a low pressure
area in the Bay of Bengal.