Death toll from cyclone rises to 119 as relief starts arriving in eastern India

Aid arrives after cyclone kills 119 in India

CALCUTTA, India — Aid workers distributed rice, dried fruits, water and tarpaulins Thursday to the victims of a ferocious cyclone that killed at least 119 people in northeastern India and demolished ten of thousands of mud huts.

Rescuers cleared hundreds of uprooted trees and electricity poles blocking roads to the devastated areas in Bihar state, said Sharwan Kumar, a state administrator. Telephone services also were restored in most of the region after a 30-hour interruption.

Rescuers found 10 bodies on Thursday in the district of Purnea, raising the overall death toll in Bihar state to 80, Kumar told The Associated Press.

Police and rescue teams have recovered another 39 bodies in the worst-hit villages in West Bengal state — Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi — since Wednesday, said Ramanuj Chakraborty, a senior local official.

Packing winds of more than 100 mph (160 kph), the cyclone struck close to midnight Tuesday.

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 23 bodies overnight from northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea.

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

Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, said told AP 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 and Anupam Nath in Chhota Suhar contributed to this report.