Toll rises in Indian cyclone

[Anonymous]

People and cows were literally blown away in a cyclone that struck India's north-eastern state of Assam this week, with rescuers finding some human bodies hanging from trees, police said.

The cyclone, packing windspeeds of up to 130 kilometres per hour, lashed at least five districts of Assam late Tuesday, killing at least 40 people and injuring about 2,000.

Troops and civil workers searching through debris of flattened houses for scores of people still reported missing feared the toll would rise.

The worst affected was Assam's Dhubri district, bordering Bangladesh, some 300 kilometres from the state capital Guwahati.

"We recovered bodies of at least three people stuck in trees after the cyclone blew them away," said N Dutta, police officer in the district's Mancachar area, where about 2,000 houses were flattened in eight villages.

Another official said villagers told him cows had been tossed in the air by the winds.

"At least 20 to 25 people are still missing and it could be possible some of them might be trapped under flying debris or lying in nearby ponds and jungles," AM Hazarika, a magistrate in Mancachar overseeing relief work, told AFP by telephone.

"Presumably those missing could be dead although we cannot just confirm this unless their bodies are recovered."

Hundreds of villagers whose homes have been damaged by the cyclone were taking shelter in makeshift tarpaulin sheds.

"Medical teams are working overtime, treating hundreds of people for wounds ranging from minor cuts and bruises to severe head injuries," Assam Health Minister Bhumidhar Barman told AFP.

"We are also providing rations and other foodstuff for the affected people."

Many people are still looking for their family members two days after the cyclone struck.

"A 30-year-old mother is frantically looking for her four-year-old son. The family was huddled together trying to escape the cyclone but once their hut collapsed it was all chaos and her son got lost," a police official said.

The meteorological office Thursday warned of more thunderstorms with higher wind speeds in the coming days.

[Aslkahuna]

more likely either a MCC or Derecho type system or even a series of tornadoes rather than an actual cyclone. Dynamically, conditions are highly favorable this time of year for severe convective weather in the Monsoon regions of Asia-most notably from Northern India across Bangladesh into northern Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Luzon in the Philippines. In fact, some rather nasty tornadoes can (and have) occurred in Bangladesh in April and May and I have seen surface hail, tornadoes and damaging thunderstorm winds in the Philippines (largest low level hail reported in the Philippines seems to be hen's egg size in Cavite [sea level] in the 1970's and golfball size along with a tornado in 1979 at Clark AB [480ft MSL]).

Steve