IslamOnline.net & News Agencies

MADARIPUR, Bangladesh — Bangledishis recounted Friday, November 16, horrors and all-out destruction after a powerful cyclone smashed their impoverished Bangladesh with huge waves, severe winds and torrential rains, killing hundreds of people and displacing thousands. “I cannot describe how devastating it was,” 40-year-old Mollik Tariqur Rahman, from southwestern Bagerhat district, told Agence France-Presse on Friday, November 16.

“It was like doomsday, the most frightening five hours of my life. I thought I would never see my family again,” he added.

Rahman said that 80 percent of his village’s homes had been flattened by the killer Cyclone Sidr.

“There is a trail of destruction everywhere,” he said. “We can’t even detect exactly where our houses were built, only a few are left and they do not have roofs.”

Farmer Badal Sheikh said the full horror of the devastation only became apparent at day break on Friday.

“Trees have fallen across every street and there is not a single house with a tin roof left,” he said. “The roofs were blown away and smashed by the wind. Now they are lying all over the place.”

Roads in the cyclone-hit areas were blocked by hundreds of fallen trees.

Power poles were also uprooted, disrupting communication and electricity supplies.

Sidr pounded the South Asian country Thursday, November 15, with winds of 220-240 kilometers (140-155 miles) an hour and torrential rains.

The tropical storm has claimed more than 1,100 people, according to the private UNB news.

Government officials said the death toll was likely to rise.

“We are expecting many dead bodies will be found there,” Disaster management official Nahid Sultana said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to the impoverished country’s network of cyclone shelters to escape the storm.

A network of shelters and an early warning system were set up after the 1970 devastating cyclone.

Towns Erased

The 15-feet (5-metre) high water surge triggered by the cyclone has devastated three coastal towns with a combined population of 700,000, Reuters said.

The towns of Patuakhali, Barguna and Jhalakathi were inundated by the surge on Thursday night, cutting off communication links.

The Home Ministry in Dhaka said several districts could still not be contacted as telephones and communications were cut.

“The cyclone has caused a havoc in all coastal districts,” one official said.

The storm triggered water surges in many of the affected districts, washing away hundreds of thatched homes, destroying crops and killing livestock.

“We have been virtually blacked out all over the country,” said a disaster management official in southern Mongla, another of the worst affected areas.

Television news reports said more than 100 fishing boats in the Bay of Bengal had failed to return to shore despite repeated storm warnings given over the radio. Many boats, however, may have been small vessels without such equipment.

Cyclones frequently cause immense devastation in disaster-prone Bangladesh, a low-lying country of more than 140 million people, mostly Muslims.

Storms batter the country every year. A severe cyclone killed more than half a million people in 1970, while one in 1991 killed 143,000 people.