As many as 10,000 people may have died and millions have been made homeless after a cyclone tore a trail of destruction through Bangladesh, officials said yesterday.

Three days after 150mph Cyclone Sidr flattened villages along the coast of Bangladesh, the Army and aid workers are still struggling to reach remote villages. The Bangladeshi Red Crescent Society has cautioned that the final toll could be far higher than the 3,113 deaths estimated by the Army last night. The Red Cross believes that 900,000 families — roughly seven million people — are affected by the devastation. Survivors on the isolated southern coast, where many areas were still out of reach for aid convoys, gave warning that they would soon die unless help came.

Sattar Gazi, a 55-year-old farmer, said: “I lost six of my family members in the cyclone. I am afraid that the rest of us will die of hunger. For the corpses, we don’t even have clothes to wrap them in for burial . . . we are wrapping the bodies in leaves.” His village, on the Bay of Bengal, was smashed by a 6m (20ft) wave.

Abdul Zabbar, a 50-year-old teacher, said that the situation in the area — already one of the most impoverished places on Earth — was unbearable. “There is no food and drinking water,” he said. “Bodies are still floating in the rivers and paddy fields.” He added that the rice harvest — representing four months of food — had been washed away.

Officials said that the humanitarian situation in coastal districts such as Barguna, 200km (130 miles) south of Dhaka, the capital, was catastrophic. Many more victims are expected to be found in remote areas, including around poor fishing villages in the string of small islands off the coast.

Aid efforts were being hampered by roads blocked by fallen trees and the sheer scale of the devastation. Douglas Casson Coutts, of the World Food Programme, said: “In the remote areas it is slow-going, they are almost chopping trees as they go along.” He added that officials were working with the military to organise air drops to the most inaccessible districts.

Most of the deaths were caused by the giant wave that engulfed coastal villages, as well as flying debris and falling trees that crushed flimsy bamboo and tin homes. However, thanks to an effective early warning system at least 1.5 million coastal villagers fled to shelters before the storm.

Pledges of aid have come in from around the world, providing hope that the relief operation will soon swing into high gear. Britain has offered $5 million, while the US is providing rescue helicopters and has said that it will send $2 million.

Every year storms batter low-lying Bangladesh, a country of 150 million people, often killing large numbers. In 1970 a particularly devastating cyclone led to the deaths of at least half a million people.

A tide of misery

— Bangladesh is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with annual floods, cyclones and a perilous transport network

— In 1998 flooding covered two thirds of the country, destroying two million tonnes of rice and spreading water-borne diseases

— An overloaded ferry that capsized on the Meghna River in 2002 resulted in the deaths of at least 400 people. Because ferries in Bangladesh do not keep passenger lists, the total killed could only be an estimate

— A death toll of 10,000 for flooding would not be unprecedented. In 1985 it led to at least that number of deaths, while a 1970 storm referred to as “The Great Cyclone” took the lives of an estimated half a million people

Source: Agencies

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