Cyclone Biparjoy made landfall on Thursday evening as a vast swath of western India and neighbouring southern Pakistan braced for flash floods, heavy rain and high winds.
More than 180,000 people in the path of the cyclone have been evacuated in India and Pakistan, officials said.
Rain pelted the shores and skies darkened along the Arabian Sea, while dust storms ham-pered evacuation and rescue work on land.
Authorities expect conditions to worsen for two or three days as Biparjoy was expected to reach wind speeds gusting up to 140kmph before slowing down in India’s Gujarat prov-ince.
In India’s Kutch district, near Jakhau port where the cyclone made landfall, authorities were expecting significant inundations of the area.
In Pakistan, Keti Bandar in the country’s flood-ravaged southern Sindh province, also lies in Biparjoy’s path.
Biparjoy, which means "disaster" or "calamity" in the Bengali language, was centred in the Arabian Sea 50 kilometres off Jakhau port in the western Indian state and 240 km off Paki-stan's southern port of Karachi, weather officials said.
India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in a bulletin that the cyclone could cause tidal waves in the Arabian Sea as high as 2 to 3 metres that could inundate low-lying coastal areas in both countries.
Classified as a category one storm, the least severe on a scale of one to five, Biparjoy ap-peared to have lost some of its intensity.
More than 100,000 people have been evacuated from eight coastal districts in Gujarat and moved to shelters, the state government said.
Authorities said evacuations have been completed in Pakistan, where about 82,000 people were moved from high-risk coastal areas.
Makeshift relief quarters were set up in school auditoriums and other government build-ings to shelter the displaced in both countries.
The World Health Organization said it was supporting Pakistan’s efforts to deal with the impact of the cyclone.
Pakistan's government and local aid groups delivered free food and clean drinking water to displaced people.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, tweeted on Wednesday that his government had taken all possible measures to ensure the safety of those at risk in southern Sindh prov-ince.
Experts say climate change is leading to an increase in cyclones in the Arabian Sea region, making preparations for natural disasters all the more urgent.
Pakistan is among the top 10 countries most affected by climate change, although the country’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is less than 1 per cent.
A 2021 study found that the frequency, duration and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea had increased significantly between 1982 and 2019.
In 1998, a cyclone that hit Gujarat state claimed more than 1,000 lives and caused exces-sive damage.
A cyclone that hit Sindh province and the city of Karachi in 1965 killed more than 10,000 people.
By Reuters/AP
Original article link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-16/india-pakistan-evacuate-over-180000-as-cyclone-approaches/102486334
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