Bangladesh Monday ordered evacuation of about 1 million people from its coastlines as Mora in the Bay of Bengal is poised to cross the country’s southern coast in the early hours of Thursday. Some people were injured, but no-one is dead, Mr Salam said. Mohammad Anam, a Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh past year after an outbreak of violence in Myanmar, said there had been no attempt to evacuate the minority community, many of whom are undocumented. The administration has set up shelters equipped with enough stockpiled to sustain and organised a number of meetings to raise awareness among people to mitigate the cyclone’s impact. We are targeting zero casualties and we will try our best to evacuate more than a million before the landfall, he told AFP. Indian Navy ship Sumitra rescued 27 people who were found adrift at sea over 100 miles away from Bangladeshi city of Chittagong, Indian Navy spokesperson Captain DK Sharma said. It killed at least nine people, five of them in coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, and destroyed thousands of houses as it moved inland towards India’s northeast. About 18 million people live in 19 coastal districts, with 10 of them being in high-risk areas. John McKissick, head of the Cox’s Bazar office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, said the agency was working on assessing the damage. Authorities called in all fishing vessels and suspended flights to and from airports in Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. The cyclone is apprehended to cause damages and affect people in the islands and coastal belts along the region. Cyclone Sidr in 2007 killed nearly 4,000 people.Flash floods and torrential rain led to landslides in hilly areas, which caused most of the casualties. Cyclone Mora has hit Bangladesh, lashing the country’s south-eastern coast with heavy rain and winds. The cyclone could affect northeastern parts of India particularly Assam, Mizoram, Manipur and Meghalaya. Road transportation was affected, phone lines were disrupted, more than 20,000 houses destroyed and hundreds of trees were uprooted. The Meteorological Department of Bangladesh has advised all fishing boats and trawlers to not venture out into the North Bay of Bengal and to remain in the shelter of harbours till further notice, according to the Indian Express.