Toll 3,000 and Rising in Bangladesh Cyclone : ‘Looked Like Nuclear Holocaust,’ Witness Says of Islands Ravaged by Storm and Tidal Wave

The death toll rose to 3,000, based on the number of bodies recovered by Monday night, from tidal waves that swept across silt-formed islands in the great Ganges River delta here.

Relief center workers estimated that from 5,000 to 12,000 people are still missing, three days after the cyclone-generated waves pounded the southeastern corner of this nation of 100 million. The victims were mostly new settlers, driven to the low-lying islands at the head of the Bay of Bengal by overpopulation on the mainland.

The Red Cross put the toll so far at 3,000 and estimated it could go as high as 15,000 to 25,000. An accurate casualty count was almost impossible to compile because most of the southern third of this Wisconsin-size country has virtually no communications system and is accessible only by water or helicopter.

A reporter for the Bangladesh Times who made it to the islands of Sandwip and Urirchar said: “It looked like a nuclear holocaust. Everything is washed away.”

Television film of the stricken region showed several feet of water still covering whole villages and vast areas of farmland, mostly rice paddies. In places where the water level had dropped, unrecovered bodies lay contorted in the mud, most stripped of all clothing.

As relief-bearing helicopters descended to the ground, weeping, naked children ran out to meet them, witnesses said.

(In Geneva, George Reid, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Red Cross officials on the scene reported “cadavers of people in the sea, cadavers of animals in the sea, the crops completely destroyed, washed out--several islands completely covered in water.

(“Several islands have become completely denuded of people, of houses, of cattle, of dwellings,” Reid told the Associated Press. “The situation on the ground is pretty desperate.”)

Authorities in Dhaka said that many bodies may never be recovered. The Bengali language newspaper Ittefaq, the largest in Bangladesh, reported that river crocodiles and sharks from the Bay of Bengal are cruising the waters of the delta.

Government spokesman Tajul Islam said that most of the victims were recent settlers on three islands formed in the last eight years from deposits of silt where the channels of the Ganges flow into the Bay of Bengal. Deforestation of the Himalayan foothills of India has contributed to heavy silt from the Ganges.

In land-starved Bangladesh, the new islands represented new hope for thousands of people, many of whom engaged in violent clashes to claim the island land.

The small, grass-covered silt island of Urirchar--a few miles off Sandwip Island in the river delta northwest of the port city of Chittagong--was by far hardest hit by the cyclone and ensuing waves, according to Col. Abu Nayeem Amin Ahmed, a staff officer with the cyclone disaster center in Dhaka. The entire population of the island may have been swept away, Ahmed said.

Walk to Island

One of the new islands, it was first developed by shepherds and farmers from nearby Sandwip, who during low tide were able to walk their stock across the river to graze on Urirchar. A few years ago, some families began to settle on the island, which was not there when the last great tidal wave hit the region in 1970.

“Some say the population (of Urirchar) was 8,000,” Ahmed said. “Some say it was 10,000. It is feared they were all washed away.”

Five Bangladesh navy ships worked the waters surrounding Urirchar on Sunday and Monday, rescuing 1,000 people and recovering 500 bodies there alone, Ahmed added.

Bangladesh itself was formed in 1971, in the wake of a war between India and Pakistan. Formerly East Pakistan, Bangladesh became an independent nation on Dec. 16, 1971, as the war ended with victory for India.

Almost immediately, Bangladesh was struck by famine during which hundreds starved. It was one of an almost unceasing series of calamities that has struck the nation in its 14-year history of independence.

Last year, the country had both a serious flood and a serious drought.

Nevertheless, Bangladesh’s martial-law president, Hussain Mohammed Ershad, on Monday described the current disaster as “the worst tragedy in Bangladeshi history.” A national day of mourning was proclaimed for today.

Officials said an estimated 2.5 million people were affected by the storm, with 15,794 homes destroyed and 122,826 others damaged.

They said the mainland was spared worse casualties because of notice provided by a storm-warning center built after the 1970 disaster. The center, which receives weather information from the U.S. space agency, issued its first storm warning Thursday afternoon. The cyclone began battering the offshore islands just before midnight Friday and continued for five hours.

The storm struck at a sacred time for the predominantly Muslim population here, the ninth month of the lunar year, known as Ramadan. It is a time of fasting and religious observances.

With its meager resources, the country was relying on a few air force helicopters and navy vessels to deliver relief supplies to survivors in the devastated region. Relief spokesmen said Monday that they still have not been able to reach many parts of the lower delta area.