(AFP) - Thousands of people living along India's eastern coast fled to inland storm shelters on Wednesday ahead of the expected arrival of a powerful cyclone later this week.

Cyclone Dana is likely to hit the coasts of West Bengal and Odisha states -- together home to around 150 million people -- as a "severe cyclonic storm", India's weather bureau said.

It is forecast to make landfall near Puri, a popular tourist destination, late on Thursday night.

"Authorities have begun evacuating more than 100,000 people in coastal areas," West Bengal state government minister Bankim Chandra Hazra told AFP.

"Authorities have ordered the shutdown of all educational institutions" in nine districts of the state until Sunday, he added.

The Indian Meteorological Department warned fishing crews to stay off the water, and authorities in Odisha state cancelled around 200 trains, according to local media reports.

A senior official at the international airport in Kolkata, India's third-biggest city by population, said authorities there were weighing whether to stop all air traffic from Thursday.

Tourists in coastal areas of both states were told to leave beach resorts and move to safe shelters.

"There was a rush of tourists at the railway station in Puri to leave," railway spokesman Kaushik Mitea told AFP.

Cyclones -- the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the northwestern Pacific -- are a regular and deadly menace in the northern Indian Ocean.

Powerful Cyclone Remal killed at least 48 people in India in May, according to government figures.

While better forecasting and more effective evacuation plans have reduced death tolls, scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.

© Agence France-Presse