NEW DELHI - A gigantic cyclone, one of the strongest ever to hit the Bay of Bengal, pounded India's eastern cost with heavy winds and rain Saturday, as nearly a million people fled the region.
More than 18 hours after the storm — the strongest to hit India in more than a decade — made landfall in eastern Orissa state, officials said they knew of only nine fatalities, most of them people killed by falling branches or collapsing buildings in the rains ahead of the cyclone.
