November 14, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 8, 1423

KOLKATA, Nov 13: At least 54 fishermen were feared drowned and another 650 people were missing on Wednesday after a severe cyclonic storm hit India’s Bay of Bengal on the eastern coast, a senior official said.

The cyclone also hit Bangladesh, where at least three people were killed and some 200 fishermen were missing.

“We fear that at least 54 fishermen have drowned and 650 were missing after trawlers sank in deep sea,” West Bengal state Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda told reporters.

He said that 12 trawlers capsized in the Bay of Bengal off the Sundarban mangrove forest when the storm moving at 60 kilometres per hour hit on Tuesday afternoon.

“Coast guards have rescued 65 fishermen so far,” he said.

He said coast guard helicopters were searching for the missing fishermen and their trawlers.

“They have so far drawn a blank,” he added.

BANGLADESH: In Bangladesh’s southeastern town of Cox’s Bazar, police on picked up 11 surviving fishermen along with the bodies of two others when they were washed ashore, a police official said, adding several other crew of three sunk fishing trawlers remained missing.

The survivors were rushed to hospital in serious condition, he said.

A Bangladesh Red Crescent official said one man drowned after he was caught in swirling waters on southern Bhola island as he tried to cross a river.

“His body was recovered today and was sent to his family home,” the official said.

Some 200 fishermen in 30 trawlers were yet to return home after halting their journey when they were warned of the tropical storm on Tuesday, said officials from Bangladesh’s trawler association in the southwestern coastal town of Barisal.

A small navy survey ship sank by Kutubdia Island, near Chittagong, but no one was hurt, officials at the port here said.

Fishing boats and trawlers remained in shelter as the sea stayed rough along Bangladesh’s 720 kilometres of low coastal belts and islands.

The calamity-prone country saw light rains and the sky remained cloudy. But shops and offices operated as normal.

A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal weakened before hitting the coast on Tuesday at the Sundarban mangrove forest bordering the Indian state of West Bengal.

A deep depression in the sea had earlier on Tuesday produced winds of up to 60 kilometres an hour.

The weather warnings came on the anniversary of the worst cyclones to hit Bangladesh. In 1970, cyclones left up to one million people dead in what was then East Pakistan.—AFP