Heavy human toll. In Myanmar, the death toll from Cyclone Mocha, which swept through the country as well as Bangladesh, now stands at 145, the vast majority of them Rohingya, the junta said in a statement on Friday (May 19th).

The cyclone hit Myanmar and Bangladesh on Sunday, with heavy rains and winds of 195 km/h demolishing buildings and turning streets into rivers.

The strongest storm in the region in more than 10 years has ravaged villages, uprooted trees and cut communications in much of Rakhine state, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in displacement camps following decades of inter-ethnic conflict.

'Under an apartheid regime'

"A total of 145 people were killed in the cyclone," the junta's information team said in the statement.

"According to the information we have obtained, 4 soldiers, 24 residents and 117 Bengalis were killed in the storm," she said.

"Bengali" is a derogatory term used in Burma to refer to the Muslim minority. Some 600,000 Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, deprived of access to health and education, "under an apartheid regime", according to Amnesty International.

All are assimilated to foreigners and must even apply for permission before travelling outside their village.

A Rohingya village chief told AFP that more than a hundred people were missing in his village alone in the aftermath of the cyclone.

Another village chief near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, told AFP that at least 105 Rohingya had died in the vicinity of the town, and that the count was not over.

False information

In neighbouring Bangladesh, officials told AFP that no one died in the cyclone, which passed close to huge refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya.

The junta's statement also said media reports of the deaths of 400 Rohingya were "false" and that action would be taken against the media outlets that published them.

Since its coup more than two years ago, the junta has arrested dozens of journalists and shut down media outlets deemed critical of its regime.

Ships and the air force brought thousands of bags of rice and thousands of electricians, firefighters and rescue workers were deployed in Rakhine state, junta-backed media reported Friday.

Flights resumed as normal at Sittwe airport on Thursday, according to the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Some international aid agencies, including the World Food Programme, were working on the ground in the town of Sittwe this week, according to AFP correspondents on the ground.

A junta spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether UN agencies had access to displacement camps outside Sittwe.

Rohingya exodus

In 2017, a violent military crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, reporting stories of murder, rape and arson.

Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, in power since the February 1, 2021 coup and who led the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown, described the identity of the Rohingya as "imaginary".

Cyclones, sometimes referred to as Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific typhoons, are a regular threat to the northern Indian Ocean coast, home to tens of millions of people.

By May 2008, Nargis had left at least 138,000 people dead or missing in Burma, the worst natural disaster in the country's history.

The junta's response to the disaster at the time was criticized by the international community. She has been accused of blocking emergency aid.

With AFP

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