Hundreds of thousands flee Cyclone Mocha in Burma and Bangladesh

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated on Saturday, May 13, from the coasts of Burma and Bangladesh as Cyclone Mocha approached, the most powerful in a decade in the region, which should make landfall on Sunday.

Mocha threatens the precarious camps where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees are crammed. It is accompanied by winds of up to 240 km / h, according to the website ZoomEarthwhich categorized it as a super cyclone.

According to the Indian meteorological office, Mocha, category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, should weaken slightly before making landfall on Sunday morning between Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh), where nearly a million Rohingya refugees live in camps set up mostly precarious shelters, and Sittwe, a town of 150,000 people on the west coast of Rakhine State, Burma.

Myanmar junta oversees evacuations

On Saturday, residents of Sittwe piled up with their belongings and pets in cars, trucks and tuk-tuks to head for higher places, Agence France-Presse journalists noted (AFP ).

Myanmar’s junta is overseeing evacuations of coastal villages along the coast of Rakhine State, according to state media. Myanmar Airways International has announced that all its flights to Rakhine State have been suspended until Monday. The Myanmar Red Cross said in a communicated that she “prepared to respond to a major emergency”.

In Bangladesh, 190,000 people have been evacuated from Cox’s Bazar and nearly 100,000 from the nearby city of Chittagong, authorities said. “They were taken to almost 4,000 anticyclone shelters”Divisional Commissioner Aminur Rahman told AFP on Saturday evening.

Rohingya refugees from “risk areas” were taken to community centers, while thousands of people fled the tourist island of Saint-Martin, located in the path of Mocha.

“Cyclone Mocha is the strongest storm since Cyclone Sidr”, said Azizur Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Service. In November 2007, Sidr ravaged southwestern Bangladesh, killing more than 3,000 people and causing damage worth several billion dollars.

Deluge of rain expected

Bangladeshi authorities have banned the Rohingya from building permanent concrete houses, fearing this could encourage them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled in 2017.

Forecasters expect the cyclone to bring a deluge of rain which could cause landslides. Most camps are built on hillsides and rockslides are common in the area.

The hurricane is also expected to unleash a storm surge up to four meters high, which could inundate low-lying coastal and river villages.

Authorities said thousands of volunteers were evacuating Rohingyas from “risk areas” towards stronger structures such as schools. But “all the Rohingya in the camps are in danger”Bangladesh’s deputy refugee commissioner, Shamsud Douza, has warned.

Panic also gripped the approximately 8,000 inhabitants of the coral island of Saint-Martin (south) – one of the main holiday resorts in the country – which is in the path of the storm.

The authorities are planning “the evacuation of tens of thousands” people living in coastal areas expected to be hit hard by the cyclone, said disaster management official Kamrul Hasan.

Operations were suspended at the country’s largest seaport, Chittagong, and shipping and fishing activities were also halted.