Cyclone Mocha crashed through Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, sparing sprawling refugee camps in Cox's Bazar but bringing a storm surge to swathes of western Myanmar where communications were largely cut off.
At least six people have been reported dead across Myanmar, according to primary information.
The cyclone made landfall between Cox's Bazar and Myanmar's Sittwe, packing winds of up to 195 kilometres per hour, in the biggest storm to hit the Bay of Bengal in over a decade.
By Sunday evening, the storm had largely passed, and the weather office said it would weaken as it hit the rugged hills of Myanmar's interior.
A member of Cyclone Preparedness Programme prepares to remove a fallen tree to clear a road in Teknaf on May 14, 2023 AFPSome 400-500 makeshift shelters were damaged in camps housing over 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar but there were no immediate reports of casualties, Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said.
Disaster Management and Relief Secretary Md Kamrul Hasan said the cyclone had caused "no major damage" in Bangladesh, adding authorities had evacuated 750,000 people ahead of the storm.
The storm lashed over Teknaf and St Martin's Island of Cox's Bazar where some 10,000 houses were damaged and numerous trees were uprooted, disrupting road communication in many areas.
Other areas of the coastal districts remained unharmed.
Meanwhile, communications with the port town of Sittwe in Myanmar were largely cut off following the storm, AFP correspondents said.
Streets in the town of around 150,000 people were turned into rivers as the storm surged ashore, tearing roofs from buildings and downing power lines.
The Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine rebel group, said more than 10,000 people had been relocated from 21 villages on the coast and in low-lying areas in the state since Thursday.
Cyclone Mocha is the strongest storm to hit Myanmar since 2010's Cyclone Giri, which had sustained winds of 230kmph and killed at least 45 people.
The wind ripped apart homes made of tarpaulin and bamboo at one camp for displaced Rohingya at Kyaukphyu in Myanmar's Rakhine state.
Rescue team remove fallen trees to clear a road in Teknaf on May 14, 2023 AFPMyanmar's junta released a statement from the national weather office on Sunday, noting that Cyclone Mocha had moved north towards Chin state.
Cyclone Mocha is the most powerful storm to hit Bangladesh since Cyclone Sidr.
Sidr hit Bangladesh's southern coast in November 2007, killing more than 3,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
In recent years, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll from such storms.
Operations were suspended at 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.
