Sharjah 24 – AFP: Cyclone Mocha crashed through Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, sparing sprawling refugee camps but bringing a storm surge to swathes of western Myanmar where communications were largely cut off.
Mocha made landfall between Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh and Myanmar's Sittwe packing winds of up to 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour, in the biggest storm to hit the Bay of Bengal in over a decade.
By late Sunday the storm had largely passed, AFP correspondents said, and India's weather office said it would weaken as it hit the rugged hills of Myanmar's interior.
Some 400-500 makeshift shelters were damaged in camps housing almost one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar but there were no immediate reports of casualties, refugee commissioner Mizanur Rahman told AFP.
In Teknaf in Bangladesh volunteers emerged to remove fallen trees and other obstacles from the roads, an AFP correspondent said.
Disaster official Kamrul Hasan said the cyclone had caused "no major damage" in Bangladesh, adding authorities had evacuated 750,000 people ahead of the storm.
Communications with the port town of Sittwe in Myanmar were largely cut off following the storm, AFP correspondents said.
Streets in the town of around 150,000 people were turned into rivers as the storm surged ashore, tearing roofs from buildings and downing power lines.
The wind ripped apart homes made of tarpaulin and bamboo at one camp for displaced Rohingya at Kyaukphyu in Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Its residents were anxiously watching the rising sea tide, camp leader Khin Shwe told AFP.
Thousands left Sittwe on Saturday, packing into trucks, cars and tuk-tuks and heading for higher ground inland as meteorologists warned of a storm surge of up to 3.5 metres (11 feet).
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