Bangladesh military joins efforts to help cyclone survivors; death toll reported at 1,100

Military helicopters and ships joined rescue and relief operations Saturday, as aid workers on the ground struggled to reach the victims of a savage cyclone that tore apart villages and towns in southwest Bangladesh killing a reported 1,100 people.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr flattened tens of thousands of homes Thursday and left millions more without power in the deadliest storm in the impoverished South Asian country in more than a decade. More than a million survivors were forced to evacuate to government shelters.

Rescuers battled along roads that were washed out or blocked by wind-blown debris to try to get water and food to people stranded by flooding. Some have employed the brute force of elephants to help in their efforts.

On Saturday, the army deployed helicopters to deliver supplies to the remotest areas, while navy ships delivered supplies and dispensed medical assistance to migrant fishing communities living on and around hundreds of tiny islands, or shoals, along the coast, the Inter Services Public Relations department said in a statement.

The damage to livelihood, housing and crops from Sidr will be "extremely severe," John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said Friday, adding that the world body was making millions of dollars in aid available to Bangladesh.

The 240 kilometer-per-hour (150 mph) winds wreaked havoc on the country's electricity and telephone lines, affecting even areas that were spared a direct hit, and leaving the full picture of the death and destruction unclear.

The Ministry of Disaster Management, which has struggled to collect detailed information from the devastated area because of the disruptions to power and communications, put the official death toll early Saturday at 686.

"The toll is going up quickly," said Ismail Mia, a duty officer at the ministry's disaster control room in Dhaka.

The United News of Bangladesh news agency, which has reporters deployed across the devastated region, said the count from each affected district left an overall death toll of at least 1,100.

Holmes said his U.N. agency believed that more than 20,000 houses were damaged in the hardest-hit districts, and that the death toll was expected to climb beyond the government's figures.

About 150 fishing trawlers were unaccounted for, he said.

Dhaka, the capital city of this poor, desperately crowded nation of 150 million people, remained without power Saturday. Winds had uprooted trees and sent billboards flying through the air, said Ashraful Zaman, an official at the main emergency control room.

Hasanul Amin, assistant director of the cyclone preparedness program sponsored by the government and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, said about a dozen teams had been deployed to the worst-hit areas in the country's southwest.

But it was slow going. In the village of Sharankhola, some people waited for hours to get dry biscuits and rice, according to Bishnu Prasad, a United News of Bangladesh reporter on the scene.

"We have lost everything," a farmer, Moshararf Hossain, told Prasad. "We have nowhere to go."

Sidr spawned a 1.2 meter- (4 foot-) high storm surge that swept through low-lying areas and some offshore islands, leaving them under water, said Nahid Sultana, an official of the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management.

At least 1.5 million coastal villagers had fled to shelters where they were given emergency rations, said senior government official Ali Imam Majumder in Dhaka.

Bangladesh is prone to seasonal cyclones and floods that cause huge losses of life and property. The most recent deadly storm was a tornado that leveled 80 villages in northern Bangladesh in 1996, killing 621 people.