After harassing Sri Lanka, reports say that  Cyclone Roanu battered the coast of southern Bangladesh and Chittagong  on Saturday, forcing half a million people to flee their homes and leaving 20 people dead in floods and rain-triggered landslides.

Winds were as strong as 88 kilometres per hour. The cyclone damaged hundreds of shanties in two backward southern districts, with many low-lying villages inundated by a storm surge that swelled up to 2m high. Authorities took more than five lakh people into shelters as the cyclone made landfall just after midday local time.

At least 20 people are known to have died, police said. “Seven people drowned at Banshkhali after the storm surge breached dykes at two places, inundating coastal villages,” Shah Alam, a police inspector in Chittagong, told the media. Three people, including a mother and her daughter, drowned on Hatiya island after sea water flooded their village.

Peripheral winds and heavy downpours brought on by the impending cyclone struck coastal areas early Saturday morning, causing widespread devastation before the storm had even made landfall.

By  Saturday evening ,the water began receding. Conditions appeared to be improving, paving the way for people to return to their homes, officials said.“Up to 20 villages were flooded (in the area),” Hatiya police chief Anisul Haq told media.

Earlier this month lightning strikes killed an unprecedented 59 people in Bangladesh in three days as tropical thunderstorms hit the country before the annual monsoon, which runs from June to September.

A mother and her young child were killed after rains triggered a landslide which buried their hillside home at Sitakundu in Chittagong District, a police inspector said. Others died on Bhola island and in Cox’s Bazar, Laxmipur and Patuakhali, officials said.

Disaster authorities shut down sea and river ports on Saturday and ordered fishing trawlers and other boats not to go out on the water. The government’s meteorological department has warned of the risk of further landslides in the country’s southeastern hill districts.

Officials told the media  on Friday night that they were prepared to move more than two million people to nearly 4,000 cyclone shelters in the country’s south.

  Bangladesh, Chittagong District, Cyclone Roanu, disaster management, Patuakhali, weather