Storm kills many, razes homes in India, Bangladesh

Kolkata:  A violent tropical storm killed at least 84 people and devastated more than 67,000 homes as it swept across eastern India and Bangladesh overnight, officials said yesterday.

Winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour (75mph) tore across northeast India and neighbouring Bangladesh around midnight on Tuesday, ravaging mud and tin-roofed homes, uprooting trees and bringing down electricity lines.

Officials in eastern West Bengal said 34 had keen killed in the north of the state, while the chief minister of neighbouring Bihar state put the death toll at 25. Two were reported dead in Bangladesh, including a police officer.

"The storm has left a trail of destruction everywhere," West Bengal minister of state for civil defence Srikumar Mukherjee told local television.

"Most of the victims were buried under the collapsed walls of their homes." The figures for the number killed and the damaged houses are expected to rise, officials said, as relief officials rushed to the affected areas where roads were blocked by fallen trees and phone lines were down.

The storm was an extreme form of what is locally known as a "nor'wester" — a weather pattern that develops over the Bay of Bengal during the hot months, the West Bengal weather office said.

Nor'westers normally bring refreshing winds that blow across the low-lying region in March and April and lower temperatures, Gokul Chandra Debnath, director of the weather office, told AFP.

Mohammad Ebrahim, 40, a resident of Hematabad village in West Bengal, told AFP by phone that it was the worst storm he had seen.

"God has saved me, but taken away my home and everything," he said, adding that he been injured by a falling tree.

Saleja Khatun, a mother of three in one of the worst-affected villages Kiran Dighi, said her family had lost everything and that they, like thousands of others, had been without food since Tuesday night.

Relief has been rushed to the affected villages and homeless people were being shifted to local schools and government offices.

In Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar said 25 had been killed and the Disaster Management Department said at least 5,000 homes had been destroyed.

The families of victims in the state were offered compensation of Rs150,000 (Dh12,400).