A cyclone has hit eastern India and Bangladesh, killing at least 116 people and destroying more than 60,000 homes. The storm ripped across India’s West Bengal and Bihar states and neighboring parts of Bangladesh late Tuesday.
A kaal Boisakhi also hit in Rongpur Bangladesh ied 4
At least 116 people have been killed and hundreds injured as a result of a violent tropical storm in the states of West Bengal and Bihar in northeastern India. Two people died across the border in Bangladesh.

Tens of thousands of mud huts in India were destroyed, while trees were uprooted and electricity lines brought down. The storm brought with it winds of up to 160 kilometres per hour.

Elsewhere in northern India, seven people died in fighting at a Hindu religious festival in Haridwar. Millions of people had gathered there to bathe in the River Ganges. The fighting started after a woman and child were run over by a car. During the trouble, part of the railings of a bridge broke and at least six people fell into the river.

Four of the deaths were reported in Bangladesh, including a police officer who was crushed under a wall.

The cyclone packed winds of up to 120 kilometers an hour, destroying power and telephone lines and uprooting trees in Bihar and West Bengal.

Indian authorities are rushing aid to cyclone-hit areas, and the homeless are being shifted to temporary shelters.

The Bay of Bengal region is frequently battered by storms and cyclones.

In 2007, Cyclone Sidr killed more than 3,500 people in Bangladesh and displaced 2 million others.

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More than 200,000 people made homeless by a cyclone last year face a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis because river embankments have not been repaired, the European Union said Tuesday.

Cyclone Aila, which tore through southern Bangladesh in May last year, killed 300 people and destroyed 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) of roads and river embankments, which prevent the flooding of low-lying areas.

The breached embankments led to villages and fields being flooded, forcing 200,000 people from their homes, “many of whom are still living in appalling conditions on strips of raised land,” the EU said in a statement.

“If the embankments aren’t repaired urgently, the humanitarian consequences will be catastrophic,” added Stefan Frowein, the head of EU?s delegation to Bangladesh.

Since the 1960s, the government has built up a network of embankments along rivers and canals in southern Bangladesh to prevent salt water flooding low-lying areas, allowing millions of people to cultivate the land.

The statement from the EU came less than a month after 18 charities criticised the government for not building the embankments quickly, forcing the victims to remain homeless indefinitely.

The government maintains that reconstruction will be finished before the rainy season begins in May.

More :

Cyclone Sidr powered through Bangladesh last 15th November 2007, devastating the southern coast and directly affecting around 3.1 million people.
More than 3,000 people have been reported dead and over 1,000 are missing, but numbers are rising fast as the full effects of the cyclone become clear.
Most deaths were caused by the 15ft tidal surge that plunged into coastal villages and towns, filling the air with debris and flattening bamboo and tin houses.
Vicious 250kph winds tore down homes, schools and power lines. Roads and bridges were also seriously damaged by the cyclone….>>>>>>more

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