DHAKA
More than 20 people were killed and 100 injured due the tropical cyclone codenamed Roanu which gradually defused after it made a landfall in the coastlines of the bangladesh after the midday today
“So far we counted 20 deaths (caused by the cyclone) but the figure may be climbed up,” Bangladesh’s disaster management department’s director general Mohammad Reaz Ahmed told media.
He said the northwestern Chittagong appeared to be the worst victim of the cyclone as it hit the coastline at a speed of 80 kilometre per hour killing nine people in that port city alone.
Ahmed said the southwestern Bhola and northwestern Noakhali and Cox’s Bazar coastal districts each witnessed three deaths while the storm damaged entirely or partially 85,000 homesteads and business structures along the coastlines.
“In terms of infrastructural and other damages as well, Chittagong suffered most as the cyclone caused damage to some 40,000 homesteads and business in the district alone,” the disaster management chief said.
The tidal surges, he said, largely inundated four upazilas of Cox’s Bazar, one in Patuakhali and an entire union in Hatia of Noakhali.
A disaster management ministry spokesman earlier said some 500,000 people were evacuated to cyclone shelters though the preparedness to take to safety some 2100,000 people in 14 coastal districts.
But the district administrations and officials at the scenes of the disaster said they continued to receive reports of growing number of casualties with highest 10 deaths in greater Chittagong alone.
