Eight Dead as Cyclone Batters India's Southeast Coast

A resident wades through a flooded street after heavy rains in Chennai on December 4. R. Satish BABU / AFP
A resident wades through a flooded street after heavy rains in Chennai on December 4. R. Satish BABU / AFP
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Eight Dead as Cyclone Batters India's Southeast Coast

A resident wades through a flooded street after heavy rains in Chennai on December 4. R. Satish BABU / AFP
A resident wades through a flooded street after heavy rains in Chennai on December 4. R. Satish BABU / AFP

Chest-high waters surged down the streets of India's southern city Chennai on Tuesday with eight people killed in intense floods as Cyclone Michaung was set to make landfall on the southeast coast.
The cyclone was forecast to hit the coast of Andhra Pradesh state later Tuesday as a "severe cyclonic storm", packing winds up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
In Chennai, cars were seen floating on raging torrents, homes were flooded, and a crocodile was spotted swimming the streets in the city.
In some parts of the flooded city, people used boats to get out of their flooded neighborhoods to the safety of government relief shelters.
The IMD warned of "exceptionally heavy rainfall" in some areas.
"We are facing the worst storm in recent memory," Tamil Nadu state chief minister M.K. Stalin said, in a statement late Monday.
Police said on Tuesday that eight people had been killed in the state capital of Chennai.
They included some who drowned, as well as one person hit by a falling tree, another electrocuted by live wires in the water, and one crushed by a falling wall.
Trees were uprooted and vehicles swept away due to the heavy rains, according to images posted on social media.
Apple iPhone manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron and automaker Hyundai suspended their operations in Tamil Nadu due to the storm, local media reported.
Emergency response
The cyclone is expected to hit India's southeast coast near the town of Bapatla, on the 300-kilometer (185-mile) stretch between Nellore and Machilipatnam.
Hundreds of people from coastal villages in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh have moved inland, with emergency rescue teams deployed to deal with the aftermath of the cyclone's landfall, according to local media.
Sea surges of waves up to 1.5 meters (nearly five feet) above normal tide levels are expected when the cyclone makes landfall, the IMD said.

Home Minister Amit Shah said the government was "braced to provide all the necessary assistance to Andhra Pradesh", with rescue teams deployed and more "on standby to mobilize as needed".
The cyclone is expected to weaken late Tuesday.
Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.
Cyclones -- the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the Northwest Pacific -- are a regular and deadly menace on coasts in the northern Indian Ocean, where tens of millions of people live.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."