Storms that battered Bangladesh and eastern India have killed more than 170 people and left many missing, navy and coastguard officials said on Saturday.
Most of the victims were fishermen caught in the storm on Tuesday night while fishing in the Bay of Bengal, government officials said.
They said over a dozen navy vessels, other boats and helicopters launched a massive search and rescue operation off the Bangladesh coast on Saturday, as hopes of finding the missing alive faded fast.
“The sea is still very rough, hampering rescue efforts,” a coastguard official said.
Strong winds and heavy rain triggered by the storm also made around 375,000 people homeless in India and Bangladesh over the past four days, officials said.
Life across Bangladesh, especially in the capital Dhaka, remained largely paralyzed with roads knee-deep high with water, witnesses said.
Most of the deaths occurred in Bangladesh where rescuers have recovered nearly 100 bodies of fishermen whose boats were lost or destroyed in the rough seas.
“So far nearly 100 bodies have been retrieved from the sea at half a dozen spots,” said an official in the badly hit coastal district of Barguna.
Hundreds of fishermen unaccounted for
Authorities say that while many boats have managed to return to shore, the navy and coastguard are still looking for hundreds of fishermen who remain unaccounted for.
Also they were looking for a naval officer missing in the bay after his patrol boat ran aground on an island during Tuesday’s storm. Other crews of the grounded boat had been recovered by helicopter.
Surviving fishermen said they were caught off guard as weather authorities had failed to warn them of the impending storm. Dhaka’s weather office denied this, saying an alert was issued well in advance.
In the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, constant rain and flooding have killed around 30 people, and forced 350,000 living mainly in coastal areas from their homes.
“People have been killed mostly from houses collapsing, lightning, trees landing on them,” said Mriganka Biswas from the state’s relief department.
“Victims are now living under tarpaulin sheets provided by the government,” he said, adding that around 70,000 homes had been destroyed in the state.
In West Bengal’s capital, Kolkata, police used boats on Friday to rescue hundreds of families stranded in low-lying slums.
The storms also killed more than 40 people and left nearly 15,000 homeless in Andhra Pradesh state on India’s east coast.