Bangladeshi people walk through a waterlogged street after heavy rainfall in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, May 21, 2016.
Cyclone Roanu swept across the southeastern coast of Bangladesh Saturday, forcing an estimated 500,000 people out of their homes. Tidal surges of up to two meters and floods killed at least 20 people.
The cyclone weakened after making landfall, but authorities in Bangladesh said scores of villages already were submerged by floodwaters.
Many of the victims were rice farmers overwhelmed by the storm as they worked in their paddies, accounts from the region said. Deadly landslides in parts of Chittagong District crushed villagers' mud-and-tin shacks, and the casualty toll was expected to rise.
VOA reporters in the area saw hundreds of homes destroyed or heavily damaged, and thousands of trees uprooted by high winds and water. Electricity service was disrupted over a wide area.
Authorities said 500,000 residents of low-lying areas in the south and southeast were relocated to thousands of shelters. Some began trying to return to their homes later Saturday after the cyclone's winds lessened in intensity.
Mohammed Ali Hossain, a government official in Dhaka, said 100,000 people were forced to leave their homes on Moheshkhali island, near the tourist site Cox's Bazaar in extreme southeastern Bangladesh, close to the border with Myanmar.
News reports quoted a local council chief on Moheshkhali island as saying residents had been warned a cyclone was imminent, but the storm arrived earlier than expected, forcing many people to flee before they could reach secure cyclone shelters.
Airlines canceled all flights to and from Chittagong, a city of over 2.5 million people in the southeast, and authorities shut down sea and river ports Saturday, halting the ferries that millions of people in southern Bangladesh rely on for basic transportation.