Nearly twenty years of unprecedented flooding in northeastern Bangladesh began to recede on Sunday, after killing about 60 people a week in the country and in neighboring India, according to authorities.

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Rescue teams sent to the scene are struggling to help millions of isolated people. These floods killed at least ten people in Bangladesh and fifty in India.

In Bangladesh, flooding from northeast India caused a large levee on the Borak River, which is owned by both countries, to burst, inundating at least 100 villages.

Arifuzzman Bhuiyan, head of the Center for Flood Forecast and Warning, a government agency in Bangladesh, told AFP that flooding had affected about 70 percent of Sylhet district, the region’s largest city, and about 60 percent of Sunamganj.

“This is one of the worst floods in the region“, he told AFP. But he said the situation would improve further in the coming days once the heavy rains stopped.

heat wave

The head of the Sylhet district, Mozibur Rahman, said the embankment, located in Zakiganj on the Indian border, could only be repaired when the water level dropped further.

In India, about 50 people died last week from floods, landslides and thunderstorms, according to local disaster management authorities.

In the state of Assam (northeast India), 18 people died according to authorities and more than 92,000 people were in shelters.

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In the western state of Bihar, Assam, at least 33 people died in a thunderstorm on Thursday. Bihar also suffered for a week from a strong heatwave with temperatures reaching 40°C.