Deadly storm hits India, Bangladesh

A violent tropical storm killed at least 116 people and devastated an estimated 100,000 homes in impoverished rural areas of eastern India and Bangladesh, officials said yesterday.

Winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour tore across northeastern India and neighbouring Bangladesh overnight Tuesday, ravaging mud and tin-roofed homes, uprooting trees and bringing down electricity lines.

Officials in the states of West Bengal, Bihar and Assam said a total of 114 people had been killed. Two others 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 from the disaster scene in North Dinajpur district.

The number of people killed and houses damaged could rise further, disaster officials said, as relief was rushed to the isolated 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 of the year, 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, the office's director, said.

Mohammad Ibrahim, a 40-year-old resident of Hematabad village in West Bengal, said by phone it was the worst storm he had ever seen.

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

Survivor Abhijit Karmokar told local television that many people had been injured or killed by flying objects, particularly tin sheeting used as roofing on many of the flimsy homes that succumbed to the storm.