Heavy monsoon rains in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and caused flooding that has left millions in distress, authorities said on Saturday. Floods regularly threaten millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh. However, according to experts, climate change is increasing its frequency, severity and arrival. Much of the country’s northeast is under water and troops have been deployed to evacuate isolated residents.
A family has no food for two days
The school has been converted into a makeshift shelter to accommodate flooded villagers within hours of the major flood. “The whole village was submerged in water on Friday morning and we were all trapped,” said Lokman, whose family lives in the village of Companyganj. “After waiting all day on the roof of our house, a neighbor rescued us with an emergency boat. My mother said she had never seen such a flood in her life,” added the young man, a 23-year-old man.
Asma Akter, another woman who was rescued from rising water, said her family could not eat for two days. “The water was rising so fast that we couldn’t get our things,” he said. Thunderstorms accompanying the storm have killed at least 21 people in Bangladesh since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.
At least 16 people killed in northeast India
Among them, three children aged 12 to 14 were beaten in the town of Nandail on Friday, local police chief Mizanur Rahman said. Four others died in a landslide in the port city of Chittagong, police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP. At least 16 people have died since Thursday in India’s northeastern Meghalaya state, following landslides and massive flooding that swamped roads, the state’s Prime Minister Conrad Sangma announced on Twitter.
In the state of Assam, more than 1.8 million people were affected by floods after five days of rain. The state’s prime minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, told reporters he had asked district officials to provide “all necessary assistance and assistance” to those affected by the floods.
Bangladesh’s third airport closed on Friday
On the flood front, the situation worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary respite from rain on Friday afternoon, Mosharraf Hossain, chief administrator of the Sylhet region government, told AFP. “The situation is bad. More than four million people are stranded due to the floods,” said Mosharraf Hossain, adding that almost the entire region was without electricity. Floods forced Bangladesh’s third international airport, located in Sylhet, to close on Friday.
According to the weather forecast, flooding will worsen over the next two days as heavy rains are expected in Bangladesh and northeastern India. Prior to this week’s rains, the Sylhet region had just recovered from its worst flooding in nearly two decades at the end of May. They killed at least ten people and affected four million people.
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