Bangladesh put on cyclone alert

The cyclone is expected to bring torrential rain

Tens of thousands of people have left coastal districts of Bangladesh as a severe cyclone heads in across the Bay of Bengal, officials say.

Operations have been suspended at the main ports of Mongla and Chittagong, and people are being moved away from high-risk areas.

More than 40,000 policemen, soldiers, coastguards and health workers have been deployed along the coast.

The cyclone is expected to make landfall in the next few hours.

With winds of 200km (120 miles) an hour, the cyclone - expected to make landfall around 1200 GMT - may also affect eastern Indian and the west coast of Burma.

Thousands of families have been evacuated from their homes in over a dozen coastal districts of Bangladesh, officials said.

'Serious'

The BBC's Alastair Lawson on board a boat chartered by the BBC to assess the impact of climate change says that the weather is now taking a marked turn for the worse.

Our correspondent - located on the Jamuna river north-west of Dhaka - says that the weather is overcast and the wind has picked up significantly.

Officials say that the level of casualties from cyclones in Bangladesh has been significantly reduced in recent years because of a better early-warning system and the construction of cyclone shelters.

Bangladesh's southern seaside resort town of Cox's Bazar appeared to be deserted after the cyclone warning was issued on Wednesday evening, reports said.

Bangladesh meteorological department officials said they feared the cyclone may also trigger tidal surges up to 10ft (over three metres) in some areas.

Southern Bangladesh is often hit by cyclones, but experts say the latest one is a category four storm, the largest so far in the season.

"This is going to be a highly damaging cyclone," Samarendra Karmakar, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department told the.

Bangladesh is frequently hit by cyclones and monsoon floods.