Powerful Cyclone Fani kills almost 30 people in India

The strongest cyclone to hit India in five years killed at least 12 people in eastern Odisha state, before swinging north-eastwards into Bangladesh on Saturday where more than a million people have been moved to safety.

Having hit land, tropical cyclone Fani had lost some of its power and was downgraded to a 'Deep Depression' by the Indian Meteorological Department.

A storm surge still breached embankments to submerge dozens of villages on Bangladesh's low-lying coast, a disaster ministry official in Dhaka said.

About 1.2 million people living in the most vulnerable districts in Bangladesh had been moved to some 4,000 shelters. The storm destroyed several houses in the Noakhali district, where a two-year-old child was killed and about 30 people were injured, local official Tanmoy Das told Reuters.