YANGON: The death toll from Cyclone Mocha has reached 145 in Myanmar, its junta’s information team said on Friday, five days after the devastating storm barrelled through the country.
Cyclone Mocha brought lashing rain and winds of 195 kilometres per hour (120 miles per hour) to Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh on Sunday, collapsing buildings and turning streets into rivers.
The storm – the most powerful to hit the two countries in more than a decade – churned up villages, uprooted trees and knocked out communications across much of Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Category 5 Cyclone Mocha hits Myanmar, Bangladesh
The region is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who live in displacement camps following decades of ethnic conflict.
“Altogether 145 local people were killed during the cyclone,” the statement said.
This included four soldiers, 24 locals and 117 “Bengalis”, it added, using a pejorative term for the Rohingya.
Widely viewed as interlopers from Bangladesh, Rohingya are denied citizenship and access to healthcare, and require permission to travel outside of their townships.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, officials told AFP that no one had died in the cyclone, which passed close to sprawling refugee camps that house almost one million Rohingya who fled a Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.
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