Rescuers also cleared hundreds of uprooted trees blocking road access to the devastated region, said Vyasji, a Bihar state disaster management official. He uses one name.
Packing winds of more than 100 mph (160 kph), the cyclone struck close to midnight on Tuesday in parts of West Bengal and Bihar states, uprooting trees and snapping telephone and electricity lines, West Bengal Civil Defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said.
Hundreds of people were injured and many thousands left homeless. They were caught unaware as there was no cyclone warning from the weather department, said Devesh Chandra Thakur, Bihar state´s Minister for Disaster Management.
Vyasji said rescuers found another 23 bodies overnight from northeastern Bihar districts of Araria, Kishenganj and Purnea, raising the death toll to 73 in the state.
The worst-hit villages in West Bengal state were Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi, where police and rescue teams have recovered 39 bodies, said Ramanuj Chakraborty, a senior local official.
Authorities handed tarpaulin sheets to the cyclone victims to set up temporary shelters in the region, Vyasji told The Associated Press.
Television footage showed uprooted trees lying across shanties and sheets of corrugated metal ripped from the roofs of homes. Small children sat outside their damaged huts as parents tried to salvage their belongings.
Namita Biswas, 51, a housewife in West Bengal, told The Associated Press by phone she and her husband were sleeping in their hut when it was crushed by a tree that broke from the impact of the cyclone. Her husband was killed.
The cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts in West Bengal and thousands more in Bihar, officials said.
In neighboring Bangladesh, tropical storms lashed dozens of villages in the northern part of the country Wednesday killing at least five people and injuring dozens, news channel Desh TV reported. The storms in Rangpur and neighboring Lalmonirhat district also demolished about 500 mostly mud-and-straw huts, the report said.
The weather office in the capital Dhaka said the storms were not related to the cyclone that struck eastern India. Such storms are common in the tropical delta nation.
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