This archive report was first published on 11 November 2019.
Published on November 11, 2019, a cyclone that barrelled into the coasts of Bangladesh and India has left a trail of devastation, claiming 24 lives.
According to authorities, Bangladesh carried out one of its biggest ever evacuation drives, moving 2.1 million people to cyclone shelters to minimize casualties from the powerful storm.
The cyclone, Cyclone Bulbul, packing winds of up to 120 kilometres per hour, killed 12 people in Bangladesh and 12 in India's West Bengal and Odisha states.
Five others remain missing after a fishing trawler sank in squally weather near Bangladesh's southern island of Bhola, district administrator Masud Alam Siddiqui told AFP.
Bangladesh's junior minister for disaster management Enamur Rahman described the cyclone as leaving a trail of destruction, damaging 10,000 homes and 200,000 hectares of crops.
The Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, shielded the coast from the storm's full impact, officials added.
As the cyclone weakened, nearly 120,000 evacuated people in India were returning home, while coastal crops in Odisha were extensively damaged, officials told the Press Trust of India.
