Cyclone Mocha began to crash ashore at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border today, Bangladesh's weather office said, uprooting trees and bringing driving rain to a region home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees.
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Packing winds of up to 195 kilometres per hour Mocha hit between Cox's Bazar, where nearly one million Rohingya refugees live in camps largely made up of flimsy shelters, and Myanmar's Sittwe, the office said.
The US Joint Typhoon Warning Center earlier said Mocha was packing winds up to 140 knots, or 259 kph, equivalent to a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
Thousands left Sittwe yesterday, 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.
A media account run by junta authorities in Rakhine showed what it said were trees downed over a road near Sittwe.
Bangladeshi authorities moved 190,000 people in Cox's Bazar and nearly 100,000 in Chittagong to safety, divisional commissioner Aminur Rahman said last night.
The rain and wind were felt in Myanmar's commercial hub Yangon, around 500 kilometres away, residents said today.
The Myanmar Red Cross Society said it was "preparing for a major emergency response".
In Bangladesh, authorities have banned Rohingya refugees from constructing concrete homes, fearing it may incentivise them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled five years ago following a brutal military crackdown.
The camps are generally slightly inland, but most of them are built on hillsides, exposing them to the threat of landslides.
Forecasters expect the cyclone to bring a deluge of rain, which can trigger landslips.
Hundreds of people also fled Bangladesh's Saint Martin's island, a local resort area right in the storm's path, with thousands more moving to cyclone shelters on the coral outcrop. ■
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