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43 missing after cyclone strikes TN: Reuters

Forty-three fishermen were missing after a severe cyclone tore across Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, officials said.

No official casualties have been reported after tropical storm 03B moved inland from the Bay of Bengal ripping up trees and roofs across the coast near the port town of Cuddalore, 180 km south of Madras.

A government official in Cuddalore told Reuters over the telephone that the missing fishermen had been at sea since Sunday.

A senior weather department official told Reuters winds had reached speeds of more than 120 km per hour.

Police said road traffic has been paralysed, with all links to the town of Cuddalore cut and there had been some reports of disrupted railway movement.

Officials and witnesses in Cuddalore, which bore the brunt of the storm, said the afternoon's gale-force winds had given way to a downpour in the evening.

"It has been raining heavily now in the past hour but the downpour is not as fierce as the afternoon's gale winds which uprooted hundreds of trees and power pylons and blew away the roofs of huts," a police officer told Reuters over the telephone from Cuddalore.

He said power supply in the town and neighbouring villages had been switched off in the morning as a precaution.

Area cyclone warning centre director S K Subramanian told Reuters that rains from the storm were lighter than predicted and that it was likely to weaken.

"The storm has now crossed the coast and the gale winds are likely to start subsiding and the system may weaken gradually," Subramanian said.

Earlier on Wednesday, residents said they had been forced to stay indoors as fierce winds and thunder and lightning marked the storm's passage inland.

"I have seen dozens of trees uprooted and palm thatch roofs of huts being blown off," D. Nagarajan, a resident of Cuddalore, told Reuters.

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