Loss of Life’
Myanmar’s shadow government on Tuesday said that at least 400 people have been killed and an unspecified number of people are still missing.
CNN cannot independently verify that figure, which stands in contrast to an earlier report by the military junta’s Myawaddy TV, which said the official death toll stands at three people, with 13 others injured.
But sources speaking to CNN said many of the bodies of Rohingya victims, who are Muslims, have already been buried per “religious customs”.
“I can’t control my tears,” said Aung Zaw Hein, a resident of Rakhine state’s capital city Sittwe, who told CNN that he had seen the bodies of children and
elderly and pregnant women lying on the ground after the cyclone.
“People are having a very hard time … because they don’t have food, they don’t have a place to lay down,” he added.
“The people become homeless, shelterless, some people even become powerless. The same situation has repeated again in our life for the Rohingya people.”
Aung Zaw Hein also said he had performed Islamic funeral prayers for eight victims.
Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visited Sittwe to assess damage and deliver donations to its residents, state media MRTV reported on Monday.
‘A large-scale loss of life in the camps’
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 neighbouring 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 organisation, 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.