Two people drowned and hundreds of trees and power poles were downed by Cyclone Biparjoy which weakened on Friday as it moved towards Pakistan after hitting the Indian coast.

• Read also: Cyclone Biparjoy: more than 100,000 evacuations in India and Pakistan

More than 180,000 residents of the western Indian state of Gujarat and neighboring Pakistan have already been relocated from areas expected to traverse Biparjoy – “catastrophe” in Bengali.

Less powerful than expected, a “very strong cyclone” crossed the coast near the port of Jakhau (west) late on Thursday and was blowing sustained winds up to 125 km/h, before starting to lose power several hours later. .

India’s forecasters expect him to settle down and be moderately depressed by Friday evening.

Two men in the Bhavnagar area drowned on Thursday night after being swept away by the water, according to the Gujarat state government.

Earlier, Relief Director CC Patel reported 23 people injured in the state.

Hundreds of power poles fell along the coast, causing power outages across large parts of the area, a spokesman for the Gujarat government told AFP.

Photo: AFP

Several hundred trees have also been uprooted and emergency teams are struggling to access the village because of the debris on the road.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Mukesh Pattni, 22, told AFP from the concrete shop where he took shelter with ten of his family. “I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday. Trees fall, everything collapses. »

Photo: AFP

Nearly 500 houses were partially damaged after the typhoon hit, said state aid commissioner Alok Pandey.

More than 100,000 residents of the state have left coastal areas for shelter inland, according to authorities.

In Pakistan, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman announced that 82,000 people had been evacuated from the southeastern coastal region.

“Mostly spared”

On Friday morning, Ms Rehman said in a Twitter post that her country had “largely escaped the storm at the peak of its strength”.

However, more than 30cm of rain is expected in some coastal areas of Pakistan on Friday and Saturday, accompanied by storm surge of up to 2.5 meters.

Shops were closed late on Thursday in the Pakistani city of Badin, and the normally bustling streets were empty as night fell.

“Everyone is very scared,” Iqbal Mallah, a 30-year-old civil servant, told AFP on Friday.

Typhoons are common in this Indian Ocean region, home to tens of millions of people. But scientists explain that this phenomenon is gaining strength due to global warming.

One of them, a climatologist at the Tropical Meteorological Institute of India Roxy Mathew Koll, told AFP that the cyclone drew its energy from warm water and surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea, also known as the Arabian Sea, were 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than four decade ago.

“The rapid warming of the Arabian Sea, coupled with global warming, is likely to increase the flux of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere and drive more intense cyclones,” he concluded.