By IANS
Dhaka : Hurricane Sidr has left at least 1,100 people in Bangladesh dead and the count was likely to go up, the government said Saturday as international help was being rushed to the cyclone-hit areas.
The government, which put the death toll at 233 Friday, scaled it up to 700 at midnight. But estimates of deaths from Barguna and Patuakhali, among the worst hit of the 11 districts in southern region, were yet to come in.
Over 200 bodies were found in the coastal belt, including Dublar Char, Sundarbans and Bagerhat, while thousands were still reported missing, United News of Bangladesh (UNB) reported from Bagerhat.
The government has launched a massive relief and rehabilitation drive following the disaster.
Heavy rains lashed Dhaka through the day Friday and the country’s power supplies snapped for several hours, disrupting communications within and with the outside world.
Also hit were transport facilities and water supply to urban areas. They were restored partially only towards the evening, after the cyclone, triggering winds at 220 km per hour, moved to Meghalaya and Tripura in northeastern India.
The death toll at Patuakhali, according The Daily Star, was 490. No information on causalities could be gathered from numerous remote islands, where residents had ignored the government’s warning of the impending hurricane.
Over 600,000 people were evacuated Wednesday and Thursday.
Around 95 percent of the standing crop in 11 coastal districts has been badly affected, said the New Age newspaper, quoting agriculture ministry sources. They said farming of shrimp and head of cattle were also damaged by the hurricane.
Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed visited Barguna district, among the worst affected by the cyclone that hit Bangladesh Thursday evening.
Besides, 732 medical teams, 12 helicopters of the air force and eight gunboats of the navy are working in the 15 affected districts, The Daily Star said.
Economists feared the Sidr would take its toll on the livelihood of the most poor because it was sure to raise inflation, the New Age newspaper said Saturday.
“Hundreds of trees lying on the roads and fields give a picture of massive damage,” said Raphael Palma, communications manager of World Vision Bangladesh, an NGO, who visited the Mongla port Friday.
Bangladesh has been prone to cyclones, having braved over 80 cyclones in the last 130 years.
In recent years, it has built an elaborate disaster management network comprising government and non-government agencies and a drill that forewarns the vast population that lives by and off the Bay of Bengal.
The global community was preparing to provide a helping hand to the country.
Two US naval ships, USS Essex and USS Kearsarge, each carrying helicopters, hovercraft and equipped with hospital facilities, were dispatched, pending a formal request for help from Bangladesh, according to the spokesman for the US Pacific Command in Hawaii.
The Rome-based World Food Programme (WFP) said it was rushing food to Bangladesh and the UN was prepared to make several million dollars available to the government from its emergency relief fund.
The European Union released 1.5 million euros ($2.2 million) in relief aid, commission spokesman John Clancy said Friday.
“Damage will be extremely severe,” John Holmes, the UN’s coordinator of emergency relief, told reporters in New York Friday. “The entire country has been affected. The main needs will be food, shelter and health care.”
UN Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Dhaka Renata Lok Dessallien praised the government’s cyclone preparedness programmes and said the UN was assessing the damages in order to come up with appropriate relief supports, Star Online said Saturday.