Violent storm kills 23 villagers

A STORM packing hail, heavy rain and winds of up to 120 km per hour has killed at least 23 Bangladeshi villagers, with 19 people missing, witnesses said yesterday.

State-run Bangladesh Television, quoting unofficial sources, reported 30 people had been killed and said some of the severely injured were also expected to die.

Hundreds of mud-walled and tin-shed houses were razed when the storm swept through Noapoti village in Brahmanbaria district, around 180 km east of the capital Dhaka on Sunday night, a witness said.

“It virtually mowed down the whole village,” said a survivor.

Hardly a structure in the village was left standing, television reports said. Witnesses said 400 people were injured. Survivors huddled in wrecked homes, amid toppled trees and collapsed walls with household items littered around them, television pictures on private Channel-I showed.

“So far, 23 bodies have been recovered from piles of debris and the death count may go up,” survivor Abdul Latif told reporters at the scene.

Latif said five of his family members died in the storm, the worst to hit the area this season. The village is not far from Bangladesh’s eastern border with the Indian state of Tripura.

As night fell, local administrator Matiur Rahman said a search for the missing was continuing.

The whole village looked ghostly in darkness, with strong winds still blowing and clouds gathering again in the sky, witnesses said.

Mohammad Afzal, a reporter in Brahmanbaria, said more than 100 people were admitted to hospital with injuries from flying debris, such as roofing material torn from houses.

The storm also damaged rice and other crops, Afzal said.

A storm on April 29 killed at least 13 people and left dozens injured at Akhaura, near Brahmanbaria, police said.

Weather officials yesterday said more storms could lash the poverty-stricken South Asian country, long known for its disasters, in the weeks ahead of the formal onset of monsoon around mid-June.