Cyclone Mocha intensified into a Category Five hurricane midday Sunday and has now hit land in Myanmar and Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from the coasts were taking shelter.
Mocha is packing winds of up to 140 knots or 259 kilometres per hour, the US Joint Typhoon Warning Center said, the equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
Mocha "is now crossing Cox's Bazar-North Myanmar coast. It (is) likely to move north-northeasterly direction and complete crossing Cox's Bazar-North Myanmar coasts near Sittwe by afternoon (Sunday)," the Bangladeshi meteorological department office said in a special bulletin.
It added the maximum sustained wind speed within around 75 kilometres (45 miles) of the centre of the cyclone was around 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour with gusts and squalls of 215 kmph.
The Zoom Earth website tracking the weather system suggested that the eye of the storm was still off the coast and heading for around Sittwe.
"The wind is getting stronger at the moment," rescue worker Kyaw Kyaw Khaing told AFP from Pauktaw town, about 25 kilometres inland from Sittwe, and where he said around 3,000 people had arrived to seek shelter.
"We distributed enough food for one or two meals to the people evacuated to temporary shelters. I don't think we will be able to send any food today due to the weather."
Thousands left Sittwe on Saturday, packing into trucks, cars and tuk-tuks and heading for higher ground inland as meteorologists warned of a storm surge of up to 3.5 metres.
"We are not OK because we didn't bring food and other things to cook," said Maung Win, 57, who spent the night in a shelter in Kyauktaw town. "We can only wait to get food from people's donations."
Bangladeshi authorities moved 190,000 people in Cox's Bazar and nearly 100,000 in Chittagong to safety, divisional commissioner Aminur Rahman told AFP late Saturday.
The rain and wind were felt in Myanmar's commercial hub Yangon, around 500 kilometres away, residents said Sunday.
AFP
