One person was killed Thursday as Cyclone Mahasen hit Bangladesh’s southern Patuakhali coast, packing winds of up to 90 kilometres (55 miles) per hour, officials said.
“Cyclone Mahasen started crossing the Patuakhali coast at 9:00 am (0300 GMT) Thursday,” Shamsuddun Ahmed, deputy director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, told AFP, adding he expected the storm to cause little damage.
“It is not a severe cyclone. It did not gain strength in the last part of its journey as it hit the coast,” said Ahmed.
“Its centre is still in the Bay of Bengal and will hit the Chittagong coast in the afternoon,” he said, referring to a densely-populated area stretching from Bangladesh’s second city to the Cox’s Bazaar tourist region.
Provincial administrator Nurul Amin told AFP one man had drowned in a lake in a coastal district as heavy rains battered the region while low-lying areas were submerged by a one-metre (thee-foot) storm surge.
About 800,000 people spent the night in more than 2,000 cyclone shelters and schools and colleges in Bangladesh’s long coastline after the weather office had warned that the storm could hit early Thursday morning, officials said.
Of the total, 600,000 people alone were evacuated in the Chittagong region, which was expected to bear the brunt of the cyclone, provincial administrator Mohammad Abdullah told AFP.
“We have enough food, medicine and other facilities in these shelters,” he said, adding that the armed forces have been kept on stand-by to face any situation.
Mohammad Mehrajuddin, an elected local government head of southern Nijhum Dwip Island, told AFP by phone that many villagers in his area did not move to cyclone shelters for fear that their cattle would be stolen in the night.
One dead as cyclone hits Bangladesh
