BARGUNA, Bangladesh, 25 September 2006 — Fishermen and rescue workers in Bangladesh said yesterday a storm that pounded the Bay of Bengal six days ago may have claimed many more lives than the official toll as nearly 1,800 are still missing.
The government said yesterday 1,788 fishermen and 391 trawlers were still missing after the storm that also killed scores of people in coastal regions including in India. Rescuers have so far found more than 100 bloated bodies.
But estimates by fishermen who managed to reach shore and rescue workers on the scene said that many more may have died at sea. Their claims could not be verified by police or the government.
“There are hundreds of them floating on the edge of the Sunderbans. It is impossible to identify them or bring them back to our villages,” said Abul Kalam, a fisherman who survived for days on a wooden plank after the storm hit last week. Kalam said the crew aboard his trawler were amazed by the storm’s power.
“Throughout Tuesday the weather was very good. But by the evening the whole sky turned dark and suddenly huge winds and 20-to-30 feet waves engulfed our boats,” he said.
“Out of 14 fishermen in our trawler, only three of us survived,” said Kalam who was being treated with other survivors at Patharghata hospital in southern Bangladesh. A Red Cross official said the death toll could rise drastically after he heard “horrible” tales from fishermen who returned safely.
“Our men have talked to hundreds of fishermen rescued after the storm. All said it was a huge storm and it sank scores of trawlers within minutes,” said Shamsul Alam, a Red Cross cyclone preparedness officer.
“It’s a tragedy of huge scale,” he said, adding that many bodies could not be recovered because of continued bad weather.
Defying the weather, at least 11 coast guard and six naval ships and two helicopters searched yesterday for missing fishermen and a naval officer in a 70-kilometer radius around the dense Sunderbans mangrove forests that stretch from Bangladesh to India’s state of West Bengal, coast guard commander Mohammad Badruddoza said.
“We have just managed to rescue a naval ship which ran aground. But we haven’t found the commander of the ship who fell during the storm, he said.
Shahjahan Shiraji, a spokesman for the Food and Disaster Management Ministry in the capital Dhaka, said bad weather remained a problem, but added there was still hope that some of the missing had taken shelter in remote islands within the Sunderbans.
The storm also wreaked havoc along the coast of India’s West Bengal, flattening mud houses and downing trees and utility poles. Authorities there said at least 29 people were killed and dozens of trawlers remain missing.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh’s main opposition party, the Awami League, walked out of Parliament to protest what it said was the government’s failure to alert the fishermen about the storm. “We’ve demanded a probe into this tragedy. The government’s weather department has failed to alert the fishermen adequately,” Suranjit Sengupta, an Awami League leader told reporters. Storms and cyclones which form over the Bay of Bengal in September and October every year kill hundreds and destroy cattle and crops in Bangladesh and in India’s eastern coastal states.
Professor Shot and Wounded
Gunmen shot and critically wounded Professor Aftab Ahmad, former vice chancellor of National University and a senior professor of political science at Dhaka University.
Three unidentified assailants shot Aftab in his house on Fuller Road in the city. Aftab’s wife Noorjahan told journalists three men wearing hats entered her house at about 8:45 p.m. and shot her husband from a point-blank range.
“Somebody knocked on the door. When our domestic help asked who it was, one of the three identified himself as Sagir. He said the Dhaka University vice chancellor had sent him,” Noorjahan said.
When the girl opened the door, the three stormed into the house and shot Aftab who was strolling in his daughter’s bedroom. “I heard firings, but the assailants fled before I could reach the room and found my husband in a pool of blood,” Noorjahan told journalists at the Samorita Hospital.
