Rescue groups are bracing for "a large scale loss of life" in Myanmar, one aid agency has warned, after powerful Cyclone Mocha slammed into its west coast, ripping down houses and uprooting trees in one of the strongest storms to ever hit the country.
Mocha barreled into Myanmar's coast on Sunday, collapsing houses, felling trees, bringing down telephone poles and severely compromising communication lines in conflict-racked Rakhine state, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Largely impoverished and isolated, Rakhine has in recent years been the site of widespread political violence.
Nearly a million stateless Rohingya members of the persecuted Muslim minority group have crossed into neighboring Bangladesh since 2017, fleeing a brutal and bloody crackdown by Myanmar's junta.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remain in Rakhine, mostly confined to camps where authorities place strict controls on their movement.
It is in these poorly constructed camps that aid agencies fear Cyclone Mocha has hit the hardest.
There has been "a large-scale loss of life in the camps," said Brad Hazlett, president of the non-government organization, Partners Relief and Development.
"We are unable to say an exact number, but know of one small village we have connected with today where we have provided toilets and hand water pumps in the last year. That village was totally destroyed by the cyclone and at least 20 people have lost their life there," he said.
He added that fatality numbers shared online vary significantly and his organization was unable to give a precise breakdown for now -- but they expect the number of casualties to rise.
"During this time, the phone network remains unstable, the roads are blocked and at least one concrete bridge was washed away so confirming the numbers is challenging," Hazlett said. "We have heard that many people remain missing or may be under the destroyed shelters."
Wind gusts over 200 kilometers per hour (195 mph) roiled Rakhine's capital city Sittwe, flattening homes in some areas and leaving bamboo and other wood debris dangerously strewn across villages, video shows.
About 90% of the shelters at a Rohingya refugee camp near Sittwe have been destroyed, resident Aung Zaw Hein told CNN.
"The people become homeless, shelterless, some people even become powerless. The same situation has repeated again in our life for the Rohingya people," he said.
Hein said he saw the bodies of children, and elderly and pregnant women lying on the ground after the cyclone and he had performed Islamic funeral prayers for eight victims.
"I feel very, very tragic. By seeing this situation I can't control my tears," he said. "People are having a very hard time ... because they don't have food, they don't have a place to lay down," he said, adding that no aid or government support has arrived so far.
Military-owned Myawaddy TV meanwhile said the official death toll stands at three people, with 13 others injured.
Myanmar's junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visited Sittwe to assess damage and deliver donations to its residents, state media MRTV reported on Monday.
As Cyclone Mocha built up power in the Bay of Bengal last week, the UN's humanitarian office (OCHA) warned that about 6 million people in the region were already in need of humanitarian assistance, among them 1.2 million people internally displaced by ethnic conflict, Reuters reported.
Myanmar's military, which seized power in a 2022 coup, view the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The Rohingya counter that they have lived in Rakhine for generations.
An estimated 1 million Rohingya now live in what many consider to be the world's largest refugee camp in Bangladesh after fleeing a brutal campaign of killing and arson by the Myanmar military.
At one point Cyclone Mocha had been predicted to hit the camp but it was spared a direct hit with the storm making landfall further down the coast.
An estimated 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine, according to Human Rights Watch, and are "subject to government persecution and violence, confined to camps and villages without freedom of movement, and cut off from access to adequate food, health care, education, and livelihoods."
The last storm to make landfall in Myanmar with a similar strength was Cyclone Giri in October 2010. Giri caused more than 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu was destroyed. According to the UN, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in Rakhine state during that storm.
In 2008, Cyclone Nargis carved a swathe of destruction through Myanmar's low lying Irrawaddy Delta, killing nearly 140,000 people.
