a new assessment reports at least 145 dead after the passage of Cyclone Mocha

A heavy human toll. Cyclone Mocha kills at least 145 people in Myanmar overwhelmingly Rohingya, announced Friday, May 19 the junta. With winds blowing up to 195 km / h, Mocha fell on Sunday between Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State in Burma, and Cox’s Bazar in neighboring Bangladesh.

In details, “four soldiers, 24 inhabitants and 117 [Rohingyas] were killed in the storm”, said the junta’s information team. The strongest storm to hit the region in more than a decade has torn through villages, uprooted trees and cut communications across much of Rakhine state, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in displacement camps.

No casualties to report Bangladeshi

A Rohingya village chief told AFP that more than 100 people were missing in his village alone as a result of the cyclone. Another village chief near Sittwe told him that at least 105 Rohingya had died around the town, and the count was not over.

In its statement, the junta reports that several media relayed reports that 400 Rohingyas died in the cyclone. She argues that this balance sheet is “fake” that it will take action 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 deemed critical of its regime.

In neighboring Bangladesh, officials told AFP that no one died in the cyclone, which passed by huge refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya who fled a military crackdown in Burma in 2017.