Up to 10 000 people are dead and millions homeless and hungry in cyclone-hit Bangladesh, officials said on Sunday, as the army and aid workers battled to reach the country’s devastated coast.
Three days after Cyclone Sidr tore into one of the world’s poorest nations from the Bay of Bengal, rescue workers were still fighting their way through a landscape of flattened villages and traumatised crowds.
Survivors on the isolated southern coast, where many areas were still out of reach for aid convoys, warned they would soon die unless help arrived.
“I lost six of my family members in the cyclone. I am afraid that the rest of us will die of hunger. We are without food and water for the last few days,” said a 55-year-old farmer, Sattar Gazi.
Most of the deaths were caused by the tidal wave which engulfed coastal villages, as well as flying debris and falling trees that crushed flimsy bamboo and tin homes - all that most people in Bangladesh can afford.
A stunned 25-year-old woman, Jahanara, recounted how she managed to cling to a tree as the storm ripped away everything around her, including her husband, two sons and mother, and even the clothes on her back.
“The cyclone has inflicted an ecological disaster,” said Shanti Ranjan Das of the government’s livestock department.
The vast mangrove forest, listed as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural organisation Unesco, is a natural tide barrier crucial to the long-term survival of coastal communities.
