Cyclone Sidr smashed Bangladesh

Very Severe Cyclonic Storm - Category 4 Cyclone Sidr smashed into the impoverished Bangladesh on 9 Nov. Tens of thousands of people across southern and central Bangladesh faced destitution after Cyclone Sidr wreaked massive destruction, flattening village after village in its path.

The storm brought huge waves, extreme winds and torrential rain as it roared in from the Bay of Bengal and smashed into vulnerable low-lying coastal districts. Hundreds of thousands of people took refuge in cyclone shelters as Sidr raced north towards the capital Dhaka before petering out in the northeast of the country.

In most areas telephone lines are down and roads blocked. Countless villages have also been blown from the face of the earth. Residents in southern districts near the coast bore the full brunt of the storm. They were hit by wind speeds of up to 240 kilometres an hour, huge waves and suffocating rain.

Experts described Sidr as similar in strength to the 1991 storm that triggered a tidal wave that killed an estimated 138,000 people. Another cyclone in 1970 killed up to half a million people in the disaster-prone country, which is also one of the world's poorest.

Neighbouring India, which had also braced for disaster, escaped the worst of the cyclone.