Dhaka -- Cyclone, Aila, lashed the coasts of Bangladesh and India on Monday, breaching dams and embankments and leaving at least 300,000 people marooned due to flooding, officials said.

A Bangladeshi weather department official said Cyclone Aila hit between Bangladesh's Khulna district and Sagar Island in India's West Bengal state, unleashing a surge as high as two metres.

"The cyclone triggered wind speeds of up to 90 kilometers per hour. According to reports tidal waves have inundated many coastal villages," the Bangladesh official said.

"The situation is very grave here. Hundreds of mud-built houses and bamboo shacks have been washed away. Even the office where I am working is inundated with five feet of water," the area chief said.

The tidal surge has also flooded the towns of Barguna and Patuakhali. Other low-lying areas and islands in the vicinity, which are historic settlements of the Rakhine community from Arakan, area also flooded after levees overflowed, a local official said.

District chiefs in neighbouring Satkhira, Patuakhali, Bagerhat, and Barguna said that an additional 230,000 people were evacuated as a tidal surge along with strong winds and heavy rains hit the coastal villages.

People rushed to cyclone shelters leaving their homes to escape the huge tidal waves, a resident of Bhola said. Three people were killed in the island district of Bhola, while another was killed in Barguna district, a private television channel reported.

Twenty passengers on three motorboats went missing when their boats sank in the Meghna Estuary in Bhola District.

The cyclone so far has killed at least 33 people, including 18 in West Bengal, officials from the two countries said. Most victims either drowned, were killed when their homes collapsed, or were crushed by uprooted trees.

Weather forecasters said the cyclone is likely to move in a northerly direction away from the coast by nightfall. There are currently heavy rains in Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State in Burma, but there have been no strong winds in the area, one Sittwe resident said.