BARGUNA, Nov 17: Thousands of people are believed dead and millions are homeless and destitute after the worst cyclone in years tore through impoverished Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday.

More than 1,723 people were confirmed to have died and the number was rising by the hour as soldiers and relief workers battled to reach the worst-hit coastal districts that were smashed late on Thursday as cyclone Sidr roared in from the Bay of Bengal.

“We are expecting that thousands of dead bodies may be found within a few days,” the deputy head of the government’s disaster management office, Shekhar Chandra Das, said in Dhaka.

“We have not been able to collect information about casualties in many remote and impassable places due to the disruption to communications,” he said.

In most areas telephone lines are down and roads blocked. Countless villages have also been blown from the face of the earth.

“The number of deaths so far is 1,723 and it is increasing,” said Major Emdadul Islam of the armed forces control room.

In one village, residents said more than 100 people had died when the area was engulfed by a tidal surge pulled in by the colossal storm.

“A 20-foot wall of water wrecked the village of Charkhali and 30 more people are still missing,” said a local government official.

“The wind and the tidal surge were so strong that it churned up four kilometres of a tarmac road,” added resident Anowar Hossen Khan.

The dead were being buried in a mass grave, villagers said. Millions more were also said to be homeless.

“Village after village has been shattered,” said administrator Hariprasad Pal. “Millions of people are living out in the open and relief is reaching less than one percent of the people.” Residents in southern districts near the coast bore the full brunt of the storm and told AFP of their terror as they were hit by wind speeds of up to 240 kilometres an hour, huge waves and suffocating rain.

Fulmala Begum, 40, said she was not warned to evacuate and had to take refuge under a bed with her husband and two children as the storm roared around her.

“Five hours later we found ourselves under a heap of tin roofs and two huge trees. Not a single house in my village was spared the catastrophe,” said the woman, lucky to be alive but totally destitute.—AFP