World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Tornado Victims Suffer In Bangladesh

On Friday, 22 March 2013, a tornado ripped through more than a dozen rural villages in eastern Bangladesh, in the district of Brahmanbaria. The disaster took the lives of at least 31 people, injured close to 400 others and destroyed more than a thousand homes.

WFP Distributes Fortified Biscuits

WFP complemented the Government of Bangladesh's efforts to provide immediate assistance to the tornado victims by distributing 12.33 tons of High Energy Biscuits (HEBs) to 1,631 affected households. Each household received 7.5 kg of HEBs to cover the most urgent food and nutrition needs of affected families.

Zainab's Experience

Zainab Bibi is one of the people who lost their homes. “At first I thought some trains were passing through the area causing the loud noise. I rushed outside and saw something shaped like a black giant rolling towards my house," she narrates. "The weather was getting hotter by the minute. I called my son and my daughter and we took shelter in a neighbour’s brick house. When we came out after the storm, we saw that our house and many others were razed to the ground.”

Zainab Remembers The Disaster “I had some rice and pulses but I could not recover anything”, says Zainab Bibi, who lost her house in the tornado. “I could not feed my children that night; I could not give them a place to sleep. Now I can feed them for the next few days with the biscuits I received from WFP. Otherwise I would have had to beg for food to survive”.