Cyclone Aila death toll rises to 264
More than 500,000 left homeless by storm that battered India, Bangladesh
Last Updated: Friday, May 29, 2009 | 12:57 PM ET
The Associated Press
An aerial view shows inundated Patharprotima block near Sundarbans, about 150 kilometres south of Calcutta, India, on Wednesday. (Associated Press) Hundreds of thousands of people flooded out of their homes by deadly Cyclone Aila were crowding government shelters in eastern India and Bangladesh on Friday.
The death toll from Monday's cyclone rose to 264 people in the two countries.
And officials say the risk of disease outbreaks is growing in the aftermath.
A senior official in West Bengal state's Emergency Relief Department says the cyclone left 500,000 homeless in India. More than 130,000 are crowded in government-run camps.
Relief officials are using aircraft and boats to deliver food, water and medicine to others sheltering in schools, office buildings or friends' homes.
Bangladesh's Food and Disaster Management Ministry has stopped announcing the number of displaced people, but on Friday said several thousand people were still in shelters.
Fears for local wildlife
Conservationists have expressed concern over the fate of one of the world's largest populations of tigers that live in a tangle of mangrove forests in the Sundarbans in West Bengal state.
At least one tiger from the flooded reserve took refuge in a house. Forest guards tranquillized it and planned to release it once the waters subside, said Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, which assisted in the operation.
It is believed about 250 tigers live on the Indian side of the Sundarbans and another 250 live on the Bangladeshi side.
Conservationists said water levels were too high for ecologists and forest officials to enter the area and assess the damage. Officials said water sources will likely have been contaminated by salt from the sea.
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