THE official death toll from the powerful cyclone that struck Myanmar has reached at least 145, including 117 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority, state television reported today.

According to the report, the figure applied to the western state of Rakhine, where Cyclone Mocha did the most damage, but the TV news did not say how many storm-related deaths there had been elsewhere in the country.

The accounting of casualties from the cyclone has been slow, in part due to communications being hit by the storm as well as the military government’s tight control over information.