DHAKA: The death toll from a cyclone that tore through southwestern Bangladesh and eastern India hit more than 200 on Thursday as villagers began returning to their homes to assess the damage, an official said. Cyclone Aila slammed into the coast of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal on Monday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless after a tidal surge washed away villages, roads and livestock. At least 131 people were killed and around 6,000 injured in Bangladesh, and 70 more died in India, officials told foreign media.Bangladesh government disaster control spokesman Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman said the worst-hit areas were closest to the Indian border but deaths and damage occurred across 14 districts on the southern coast. Around 220,000 mud and bamboo houses were washed away while another 300,000 were damaged, he said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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