MORE than 400 people were killed and over 32,000 injured in a few minutes of terror when a severe tornado tore through the north Bangladesh district of Tangail, and officials feared yesterday the toll could go higher, reports Anis Ahmed.
Bangladesh state television said 406 people had been killed by Monday's tornado, one of the worst, storms to batter this poverty stricken country in recent years.
"It's a terrible nightmare," said, an official after watching the horrors on television. Footage showed flattened villages as survivors wailed over their dead loved ones and troops and volunteers struggled to retrieve bodies from heaps of rubble.
The television said more than 32,000 people were injured, nearly 100,000 were made homeless and hundreds missing.
Rescuers said the death toll could rise as many of the injured were critically ill. "I would not be surprised if the toll touches 1,000," one said.
Army medical teams joined paramedics treating the injured but hospitals had no room to accommodate more patients. Sheikh Hasina, leader of the opsition Awami League, has asked her followers to help. The Red Crescent society has moved hundreds of volunteers into affected areas.
Mr Habibur Rahman, head of Bangladesh's caretaker government, expressed his shock at the unfolding tragedy.
Bangladesh's worst storm in 1991 killed more than 138,000 people along the coast and on islands in the Bay of Bengal.
Rescuers sifted through rubble and twisted trees looking for hundreds of people believed to be missing, witnesses said.
The official BSS news agency said the injured were being ferried for different hospitals by all available transport. "They are in such a rush that they left corpses without burial," one witness said.
Meteorologists in Dhaka said the storm was short lived but fierce, with winds of up to 150 kph (93 mph). "Some families have no one left to mourn," a police officer at Barabhita village told reporters.