Death toll from cyclone rises to 112 as relief starts arriving in eastern India

Aid arriving after cyclone kills 112 in east India

CALCUTTA, India — Aid workers distributed rice, dried fruits, water and tarpaulins Thursday to the victims of a ferocious cyclone that killed 112 people in northeastern India and demolished ten of thousands of mud huts.

Rescuers also cleared hundreds of uprooted trees blocking road access to the devastated region, said Vyasji, a Bihar state disaster management official who uses one name.

Packing winds of more than 100 mph (160 kph), the cyclone struck close to midnight Tuesday in parts of West Bengal and Bihar states, ripping up trees and snapping telephone and electricity lines, West Bengal Civil Defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said.

Hundreds of people were injured and thousands left homeless. They were caught unaware as there was no cyclone warning from the weather department, said Devesh Chandra Thakur, Bihar state’s minister for disaster management.

“Most people were sleeping when the cyclone struck. They ran out of their homes into the open,” said M. B. Shajuruddin, a 30-year-old teacher in Chhota Suhar, a village in West Bengal.

The storm destroyed most the village’s 500 tin-roofed huts, and splintered trees.

“We have so far received no government help … People are surviving on whatever they are left with,” he said.

Vyasji said rescuers found another 23 bodies overnight from northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea, raising the overall death toll to 112.

Authorities handed tarpaulin sheets to the cyclone victims to set up temporary shelters in the region and distributed food and water, Vyasji told The Associated Press.

Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, told The Associated Press by phone she and her husband were sleeping in their hut when it was crushed by a tree that broke from the impact of the cyclone. Her husband was killed.

The cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts in West Bengal and thousands more in Bihar, officials said.

Associated Press reporters Indrajit Singh in Patna, India, Anupam Nath in Chhota Suhar and Farid Hossain in Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributed to this report.