Cyclone hits Sri Lanka as southern India hunkers down

Cyclone Burevi hit Sri Lanka overnight, rattling the island nation but leaving it relatively unscathed on its way to southern India, officials said yesterday. 

Burevi, the second cyclone in the southern Bay of Bengal in a week, slammed into north-eastern Sri Lanka just before midnight (1830 GMT).

Packing winds up to 100 kilometres (60 miles) an hour, it soaked parts of the country but caused no casualties and less devastation than feared.

"There was rain and strong winds, but the cyclone did not cause any major damage in our area," Mangalanath Liyanarachchi, a local reporter in Trincomalee, 260 kilometres (160 miles) from Colombo, said by telephone.

Thousands of people living along the coast had been asked to seek temporary shelter inland, but they have now moved back to their homes, Liyanarachchi said.

Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre (DMC) had issued a red alert and asked fishermen not to venture out to sea.