Bangladesh cleans up after cyclone lashes coast Calm before storm: People gather at a beach to watch the sea while cyclone Mahasen heads towards landfall in Chittagong. Chittagong: Bangladesh has begun cleaning up after a killer cyclone wrecked thousands of homes along its coast. The country breathed a sigh of relief the damage was not much worse. Fourteen people are known to have died in Bangladesh after cyclone Mahasen, which was later downgraded to a tropical depression, lashed southern coastal regions with winds of up to 100km/h. Bangladeshi authorities said they had recovered the bodies of 25 Muslim Rohingya from neighbouring Myanmar, missing since their boat capsized on Monday as they fled the oncoming storm. Twenty of them were children. The authorities said the bodies of the Rohingya were found washed up on a beach near the Myanmar border. "We assume they are of the missing Rohingya" due to their clothing, Cox's Bazar police chief Mohammad Azad Mia said. But there was a wider sense of relief that the damage and death toll was not higher in both countries, where cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in recent decades. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina "expressed gratitude to the Almighty" in the aftermath of Mahasen and asked people to "offer thanksgiving prayers" on Friday, her spokesman Abul Kalam Azad said. At one stage, up to a million people had taken refuge in makeshift shelters along the coast, mainly in the densely-populated stretch between the second city of Chittagong and the Cox's Bazar tourist region. They spent the night in 3000 cyclone shelters, schools and colleges along Bangladesh's long, winding coastline, which is home to 30 million people. "The number of casualties were minimum because of our preparations," Disaster Management Minister Mahmud Ali told reporters in the capital. Most people returned to their homes after the storm passed over, heading towards India as its strength waned. Hundreds of thousands of people who live in low-lying areas and islands in the vast Meghna river estuary were the most affected, as thousands of their houses were levelled by the cyclone as it made landfall. "At least 15,000 mud-built houses were damaged by the cyclone in our district," said Sirajul Islam, government administrator of Noakhali district. Villagers and fishermen in remote river shoals were the worst hit. We're still assessing the damage. We've sent our officials to do surveys. We'll get a full picture by end of today," said Nurul Amin, provincial commissioner. Rain and strong winds also lashed Myanmar's north-west coast, home to camps housing tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya, but the country was largely spared the brunt of the storm. Myanmar state media had earlier reported that 70,000 people were evacuated from the camps and vulnerable villages in Rakhine state, close to the border.