Mobs looted cars and shops in the eastern Indian state of Orissa yesterday in the wake of a cyclone that officials say may have killed thousands of people and left at least 1.5 million homeless.
Villagers wielding sticks stopped passing cars on the highway linking the state capital, Bhubaneshwar, and the town of Cuttack, taking potatoes, wheat and flour, witnesses and officials said.
Media reports have compared the 260 k.p.h. cyclone, the worst to hit India's Bay of Bengal coastline in three decades, to a 1997 tidal surge which killed thousands in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
"At least 3,000 people are feared dead," said Star News, although no official figures are available and no account of the storm's impact has come in from the worst hit districts, Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur.
The Press Trust of India said thousands of women, children and old people were spending the night under the open sky and in some areas almost all the houses had been destroyed.
The cyclone, the second to hit the state in a month, will be treated as a national calamity, the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said.
Most telephone and power lines were cut in the region after winds of up to 260 k.p.h. hit the state on Friday.
"Three warehouses of the FCI [Food Corporation of India] have been emptied but there is still looting," Mr Dand Sinha, an aide in Chief Minister Mr Giridhar Gamang's office, said. "They are hungry and they have no water either."
Preliminary reports showed 200,000 houses had been destroyed in 15,000 villages in the coastal districts of the state, one of the poorest in India. Army aircraft and helicopters could not move until yesterday because of fierce winds and rains.
"The damage could have been worse had we not evacuated 150,000 people from Kendrapara and Jagdishpur before the storm hit these two districts, Special Relief Commissioner Mr D.N. Pari said.
Central Relief Commissioner Mr Bhagat Singh said several thousand troops from neighbouring Bihar and West Bengal had started moving in to clear highways and start relief work.
The army was expected to take over air traffic control to restore flights, while officials hoped for the restoration of power supply later yesterday. "Heavy loss of life and property is expected," he said. "It is difficult to quantify at this moment when you have had such devastation."