Cyclone kills 1,100 in Bangladesh

DHAKA—A cyclone that slammed into the coast with 150 mph winds killed at least 1,100 people, isolating remote towns and villages swamped by a storm surge or hemmed in by piles of debris, aid workers and a Bangladeshi news agency said Friday.
Tropical Cyclone Sidr roared across the country’s southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves, leveling thousands of flimsy huts and forcing the evacuation of 650,000 villagers, officials said.
The United News of Bangladesh news agency said reporters deployed across the devastated region made their own count in each affected district and reached a toll of 1,100.
The government, which earlier put the death toll at 242, has acknowledged its trouble keeping count — with power and phone lines down in most remote areas — and said it expected the official number to rise significantly.
The cyclone destroyed homes, crops and fish farms in 15 coastal districts, local government officials and witnesses said. Relief workers struggled to ferry food and medicine Friday to hundreds of thousands of survivors, officials and aid workers said.
Hasanul Amin, assistant director of the cyclone preparedness program sponsored by the government and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, said that about a dozen teams have been deployed to conduct relief operations in the worst-hit areas in the country’s southwest.

—Agencies