Most of the victims "died when their homes or walls collapsed on them," said Showkat Ali, the government administrator of Barisal district, where seven people were killed. Three others died in neighboring districts, according to the French news agency AFP. The storm, named Reman, weakened considerably after hitting Bangladesh's Patuakhali district early Tuesday with sustained winds of 111 kilometers per hour (69 miles per hour). Dhaka's meteorological department said the sustained wind speed dropped to 90 kph (56 mph) after the cyclone made landfall, with gusts of up to 120 kph (75 mph), the U.S.-based AP news agency reported. Dozens of villages were flooded after embankments protecting them from tidal surges were washed away or damaged by the cyclone, local television stations said. About 800,000 people had been evacuated from vulnerable areas of Bangladesh on Sunday. In neighboring India, more than 150,000 people fled the coast, leaving the low-lying Sundarbans forest region where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal. By Tuesday afternoon, the cyclone had weakened to a cyclonic storm, but strong winds and rains continued to lash Bangladesh's coast. "The storm is still causing heavy rainfall and the wind speed remains high," Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik, a Bangladesh Meteorological Department official, told AFP. In past decades, cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh, where most of the coastal areas are less than 1 or 2 meters (3 or 6 feet) above sea level and heavily populated. The number of cyclones hitting the South Asian country has increased from an average of one every few years to three a year because of climate change, scientists say. Despite the increase, improved forecasting and evacuation planning have significantly reduced the number of deaths. The so-called Great Bhola Cyclone in November 1970 killed an estimated half-million people. In May 2023, Cyclone Mora killed more than 500 people and left hundreds missing, making it the deadliest storm to hit Bangladesh since Cyclone Sidr in November 2007, which killed more than 3,000. See Also: Bangladesh: 800,000 people flee coast as cyclone approaches (in Portuguese)