The Eastern Indian city of Kolkata has been devastated by a powerful cyclone which has killed at least 22 people across India and Bangladesh.

Storm Amphan struck coastal areas with ferocious wind and rainfall.

Thousands of trees were uprooted in the gales, electricity and telephone lines brought down and houses flattened.

Many of Kolkata’s roads were flooded and its 14 million people without power.

The storm is the first super cyclone to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999, though its winds had weakened by the time it struck, it was still classified as a very severe cyclone.

Coronavirus restrictions have been hindering emergency and relief efforts while social-distancing measures made mass evacuations more difficult.

 Amphan began hitting the Sundarbans, a mangrove area around the India-Bangladesh border, home to four million people on Wednesday afternoon, before carving north and north-eastwards towards Kolkata, a historic city that was the capital of the British Raj.

In Bangladesh, the worst-affected district was Satkhira, where large areas have been flooded as embankments collapsed in several places.

Initial assessments of the damage are being hampered by blocked roads and flooding in all these areas.