Cyclone toll in Myanmar's Rakhine state rises to 41

The death toll in cyclone-hit villages of Myanmar's Rakhine state rose to at least 41 on Tuesday, local leaders told AFP.

Packing winds of up to 195 kilometres per hour, Mocha made landfall on Sunday, downing power pylons and smashing wooden fishing boats to splinters.

"We can confirm there are 17 deaths," Karlo, the administrator of Bu Ma village near the state capital Sittwe, told an AFP reporter at the scene.

"There will be more deaths, as more than a hundred people are missing."

The village is inhabited by the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

The Bu Ma number was on top of a death toll of 24 given to AFP by a Rohingya village leader in nearby Khaung Doke Kar village.

That leader requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals from the country's junta.

The junta said on Monday that five people had been killed, without specifying exactly where they had died.

It was not clear whether the junta's death toll included any of those killed in Bu Ma and Khaung Doke Kar.

AFP has contacted a junta spokesman for comment on the new death toll.

In Bu Ma on Tuesday morning, residents walked the seashore searching for family members swept away by a storm surge that accompanied the cyclone, AFP correspondents said.

Widely viewed as interlopers in Myanmar, the Rohingya are denied citizenship and healthcare and require permission to travel outside of their villages in western Rakhine state.

"We haven't eaten for two days... We haven't got anything and all I can say is that no one has even come to ask."