Cyclone Mocha hits Myanmar’s junta, says 145 dead
MyanmarTraveled through the tropics in the past 5 daysCyclone MochaDevastating, Myanmar’s junta information group said on Friday that Cyclone Mocha had killed 145 people.
Agence France-Presse reported that Cyclone Mocha brought heavy rains in Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh on the 14th, with wind speeds of 195 kilometers per hour, causing buildings to collapse and streets to flood into rivers.
This is the most powerful storm that Myanmar and Bangladesh have experienced in more than 10 years. Strong winds ravaged villages, uprooted trees, and disrupted external communication in most parts of Myanmar’s Rakhine State Province.
Rakhine State is home to tens of thousands of Rohingya who are now settled after decades of ethnic conflict.
The junta said in a statement that the dead included four soldiers, 24 local residents and 117 “Bengalis”, a pejorative term for the Rohingya.
The Roya are widely seen as interlopers from Bangladesh, denied citizenship and medical care, and require permits to leave their towns and villages.
Officials in neighboring Bangladesh told AFP that no one was killed as the cyclone swept through a sprawling refugee camp in Bangladesh housing nearly a million Rohingya who fled a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.