1.
AERIAL VIEWS: tornado-devasted area, Madaripur, Bangladesh (5 shots)
0.40

2.
GV AND SVs: villagers sifting through debris of village. (3 shots)
0.51

3.
GV AND SVs: injured people lying on stretchers. (4 shots)
1.05

4.
GVs AND SV: devastated village, Gopalganj, and wrecked jail. (4 shots)
1.22

5.
GV: helicopter landing in village.
1.34

6.
GVs: relief supplies being unloaded from helicopter. (3 shots)
2.00



Initials RH/WLW/AH/0355



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: INTRODUCTION Vast areas of Bangladesh have been devasted by the killer tornado which left nearly a thousand people dead and more than eight thousand injured. Several thousand others were left homeless.

SYNOPSIS: The bulk of the damage was done in the Madaripur and Gopalganj areas west of Dacca, the capital. The tornado left behind a trail of flood waters as several rivers burst their banks, and in one official estimate some four thousand homes were swept away. At sea, the navy searched for several fishing boats missing with more that 200 people on board and at least 35 other boast were known to have capsized. The storm severely disrupted communications, and authorities said it could take some time to build up accurate statistics on the total damage.

The death, devastation and misery was wide-spread. Even for a country which is used to regular floods and storms, the latest disaster hit hard. There was hardly a village in the tornado's path which didn't suffer grief of one sort or another.

In one village in the Gopalganj area, the local jail was also wrecked -- and the 149 prisoners fled during the ensuring chaos.

Rescue operations were quickly mounted by the authorities, with priority being given to food and medical supplies. Conventional aircraft were of little use in the remote areas with no landing strips,and helicopters were brought in for much of the work.

By Thursday (7 April),a week after the tornado struck, the official death toll stood at 880. Reports of further casualties were still coming in from the outlying areas.