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Chittagong — Cyclone Roanu battered the coast of southern Bangladesh on Saturday, forcing half a million people to flee their homes and leaving 23 people dead in floods and rain-triggered landslides.

The cyclone damaged tens of thousands of mud-and-tin houses in the impoverished southern districts, with many low-lying villages inundated by a storm surge that swelled up to two metres high.

Authorities took more than 500,000 people into shelters as the cyclone made landfall just after midday local time, packing winds as strong as 88 km/h.

At least 23 people are known to have died including 11 who were killed in the Chittagong district, which bore the brunt of the devastation, police and officials said.

“Seven people drowned at Banshkhali after the storm surge breached dykes at two places, inundating coastal villages,” Shah Alam, a police inspector in Chittagong, told AFP.

Some 250,000 people were marooned on the Chittagong coast as sea water ripped through dykes, flooding dozens of villages, government administrator of the district Mesbah Uddin told AFP.

Three people, including a mother and her daughter, drowned on Hatiya island after sea water flooded their village, and another three people died in Kutubdia Island.

By early evening on Saturday conditions appeared to be improving, paving the way for people to return to their homes, officials said.

“Up to 20 villages were flooded (in the area),” Hatiya police chief Anisul Haq told AFP.

“The flood water is now receding,” he said. — AFP