A fierce cyclone that has whipped up tidal waves is wreaking havoc and destruction on Bangladesh’s southwestern coast today.

Homes have been wiped out and trees uprooted in what officials described as the worst storm in more than 15 years.

The eye of Cyclone Sidr, visible in satellite images as a colossal swirling white mass bearing north from the Bay of Bengal, hit land in an impoverished coastal area near Bangladesh’s border with India.

Samarendra Karmakar, the head of the Bangladeshi meteorological department, said the storm matched one in 1991 that triggered a tidal wave that killed an estimated 138,000 people.

However he added he was optimistic that, this time around, a major effort to evacuate villages and place people in special shelters could mean low-lying Bangladesh - one of the world’s poorest countries - would escape significant loss of life.

“The cyclone has battered Bangladeshi coastal areas. The velocity of the wind in that area is 220 to 240 kilometres (140 to 155 miles and hour),” he said.

“It is not less severe than the 1991 cyclone, in some places it is more severe. But we are expecting less casualties this time because the government took early measures. We alerted people to be evacuated early."

Bangladesh’s worst cyclone disaster was in 1970, when some half a million people died.

Officials in both Bangladesh and across the border in India have been evacuating hundreds of thousands of people from the area over the past 48 hours.

Mr Karmakar said rivers in the Sunderbans area, a vast mangrove forest straddling the India-Bangladesh border and the natural habitat of endangered Royal Bengal tigers, were also swelling fast as the storm moved north in the direction of the capital Dhaka.

An official in Barisal, 120 kilometres south of Dhaka, spoke of severe destruction.

“Many trees have been uprooted and houses and schools blown away. There are no reports of deaths so far. We can not get out to get much information because of the severe storm,” Mostofa Kamal, a district relief and rehabilitation officer, told AFP by telephone.

“The houses are made of only tin, bamboo and straw, which cannot withstand storms,” explained Mohammad Monjur-e-Elahi, another Bangladeshi district administrator.

Much of Bangladesh’s south and centre has bunkered down for the storm, with even the country’s main sea port at Chittagong, to the east of the cyclone’s path, also shut down.

Officials were also on high alert in neighbouring India’s coastal states of West Bengal and Orissa.

“The cyclone has a diameter of about 500 kilometres with a wall of clouds about 200 kilometres tall,” Ladu Ram Meena, deputy director of the weather centre for India’s eastern region.

Authorities in India have been told to halt rail and other transportation in some areas due to the likelihood of heavy floods.

Large-scale damage to power and communication lines was also expected.

“We have kept the army on standby,” Ashim Dasgupta , West Bengal Finance Minister, said.

Cyclone Sidr is expected to fizzle out on Saturday over India’s north eastern state of Assam and just south of the mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

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