At least five dead as Cyclone Mora hits coastal Bangladesh

May 30 (UPI) -- Cyclone Mora made landfall in southeast Bangladesh on Tuesday, killing at least five people and forcing hundreds of thousands into shelters, emergency officials said.

The cyclone, the equivalent of a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall early Tuesday with heavy rains and winds of up to 72 mph. The government's meteorological agency previously warned that low-lying coastal areas were "likely to be inundated" by a storm surge of up to 5 feet. Emergency officials evacuated residents of those cities; about 200,000 were removed from Cox's Bazar and 150,000 from Chittagong, and sent to shelters, school and government offices.

Most of those killed died from falling tree limbs, the BBC reported.

Neighboring Myanmar was also hit by the cyclone.

Refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar area, where about 200,000 Rohingya Muslims escaping persecution in Myanmar are housed, were also hard-hit, with nearly all the temporary huts in the Balalkhali and Kutupalong camps destroyed by the cyclone, the Dhaka Tribune reported Tuesday.

The storm is expected to weaken as it travels inland, although heavy rain is forecast for Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh states.

Storms in the Bay of Bengal are common during Bangladesh's monsoon season, which typically occurs in the last half of the year. Cyclone Roanu left at least 24 people dead when it hit coastal Bangladesh in 2016.