Orissa still devastated by `storm of the century'

Rescue operations, led by the military, gathered momentum yesterday in eastern India's Orissa state, three days after it was hit by the "storm of the century", which has left over 10 million people - or nearly a third of the state - homeless. Reports from the state capital, Bhubaneshwar, yesterday said over 3,000 people might have died in the cyclone that moved in from the Bay of Bengal on Friday, lashing India's second-poorest state for 16 hours with winds up to 150 m.p.h. Officials say that with the recovery of 39 bodies from coastal areas yesterday, the death toll in the cyclone so far has risen to around 250.

The state revenue minister, Mr Jagannath Patnaik, yesterday said over five million homes had been destroyed and that the number of dead "will be in thousands".

The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, declared the cyclone a "national calamity" and announced a £43 million relief package for the cyclone victims at the weekend.

Meanwhile, food riots have broken out in Bhubaneshwar, which has been without electricity, fresh food or drinking water for three days with groups of bedraggled and hungry people stopping vehicles carrying emergency relief supplies and looting them.

Eyewitnesses said there were hardly any police to tackle the rioters as most of them had left for their homes outside the capital to check on their families. Queues of vehicles also wound their way around petrol stations, where fierce fights broke out over dwindling fuel reserves.

The army has deployed around 10,000 troops on relief and rescue operations while air force and navy helicopters are dropping food, water, medicines and other emergency supplies to the worst affected areas around Paradip port on the east coast, which bore the brunt of the storm. Five naval ships, carrying 150 tonnes of supplies as well as generators, are anchored outside the port, waiting for it to be desilted before docking.

But the herculean task of counting the dead and searching for the hungry and stranded has not even started, as most roads to affected areas have been washed away by swollen rivers, blocking convoys of relief supplies and rescue teams.

State officials said few buildings and houses remained undamaged and tens of thousands of homeless people were begging for food along highways, camping under shelters made up of plastic bags and strips of polythene.

The worst hit were those living in urban slums, where flimsy shacks were flattened while in the countryside bodies of humans and cattle floated in waterlogged rice fields.