“MAJOR EMERGENCY”
The Myanmar Red Cross Society said it was “preparing for a major emergency response”.
In Bangladesh, authorities have banned Rohingya refugees from constructing concrete homes, fearing it may encourage them to settle permanently rather than return to Myanmar, which they fled five years ago following a brutal military crackdown.
The camps are generally slightly inland but most of them are built on hillsides, exposing them to the threat of landslides.
Forecasters expect the cyclone to bring a deluge of rain, which can trigger landslips.
“The wind started about 8.30 this morning and it’s getting stronger,” a Rohingya community leader in the Kyaukphyu displacement camp told AFP.
“A house at the camp collapsed and the roof of a shelter built by UNHCR was blown away,” they said, requesting anonymity.
Hundreds of people also fled Bangladesh’s Saint Martin’s island, a local resort area right in the storm’s path, with thousands more moving to cyclone shelters on the coral outcrop.
Those left behind said they feared the storm’s approach.
“We are in a panic because we don’t have enough cyclone shelters here,” Saint Martin’s resident Jahangir Sarwar, 23, told AFP by phone.
“We asked the administrators many times that everyone should be evacuated to a safe place in mainland Teknaf town. But no action was taken.”
Cyclone Mocha is the most powerful storm to hit Bangladesh since Cyclone Sidr, Azizur Rahman, the head of Bangladesh’s Meteorological Department, told AFP.
Sidr hit Bangladesh’s southern coast in November 2007, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
Operations were suspended at Bangladesh’s largest seaport, Chittagong, with boat transport and fishing also halted.
Cyclones – the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the Northwest Pacific – are a regular and deadly menace on the coast of the northern Indian Ocean where tens of millions of people live.
Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, killing at least 138,000 people.
Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change.