AIRLINK 196.38 Increased By ▲ 4.54 (2.37%)
BOP 10.11 Increased By ▲ 0.24 (2.43%)
CNERGY 7.75 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (1.04%)
FCCL 38.10 Increased By ▲ 0.24 (0.63%)
FFL 15.74 Decreased By ▼ -0.02 (-0.13%)
FLYNG 24.54 Decreased By ▼ -0.77 (-3.04%)
HUBC 130.38 Increased By ▲ 0.21 (0.16%)
HUMNL 13.73 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (1.03%)
KEL 4.60 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-1.5%)
KOSM 6.19 Decreased By ▼ -0.02 (-0.32%)
MLCF 44.85 Increased By ▲ 0.56 (1.26%)
OGDC 206.51 Decreased By ▼ -0.36 (-0.17%)
PACE 6.58 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.3%)
PAEL 39.77 Decreased By ▼ -0.78 (-1.92%)
PIAHCLA 17.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.39 (-2.22%)
PIBTL 7.99 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-0.99%)
POWER 9.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.43%)
PPL 178.91 Increased By ▲ 0.35 (0.2%)
PRL 38.93 Decreased By ▼ -0.15 (-0.38%)
PTC 24.31 Increased By ▲ 0.17 (0.7%)
SEARL 109.27 Increased By ▲ 1.42 (1.32%)
SILK 1.00 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (3.09%)
SSGC 37.75 Decreased By ▼ -1.36 (-3.48%)
SYM 18.83 Decreased By ▼ -0.29 (-1.52%)
TELE 8.53 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-0.81%)
TPLP 12.14 Decreased By ▼ -0.23 (-1.86%)
TRG 64.76 Decreased By ▼ -1.25 (-1.89%)
WAVESAPP 12.11 Decreased By ▼ -0.67 (-5.24%)
WTL 1.64 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-3.53%)
YOUW 3.87 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-2.03%)
BR100 12,000 Increased By 69.2 (0.58%)
BR30 35,548 Decreased By -112 (-0.31%)
KSE100 114,256 Increased By 1049.3 (0.93%)
KSE30 35,870 Increased By 304.3 (0.86%)

SYLHET, (Bangladesh): Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and unleashed devastating floods that left millions of others stranded, officials said Saturday.

Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.

Relentless downpours over the past week have inundated vast stretches of Bangladesh’s northeast, with troops deployed to evacuate households cut off from neighbouring communities.

Schools have been turned into relief shelters to house entire villages inundated in a matter of hours by rivers that suddenly burst their banks.

“The whole village went under water by early Friday and we all got stranded,” said Lokman, whose family lives in Companiganj village.

Four million people hit by floods in Bangladesh: UN

“After waiting a whole day on the roof of our home, a neighbour rescued us with a makeshift boat. My mother said she has never seen such floods in her entire life,” the 23-year-old added.

Asma Akter, another woman rescued from the rising waters, said her family had not been able to eat for two days.

“The water rose so quickly we couldn’t bring any of our things,” she said. “And how can you cook anything when everything is underwater?”

Lightning triggered by the storms has killed at least 21 people around the South Asian nation since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.

Among them were three children aged between 12 and 14 who were struck by lightning on Friday in the rural town of Nandail, said local police chief Mizanur Rahman.

Another four people died when landslides hit their hillside homes in the port city of Chittagong, police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP.

At least 16 people have been killed since Thursday in India’s remote Meghalaya, the state’s chief minister Conrad Sangma wrote on Twitter, after landslides and surging rivers that submerged roads.

Next door in Assam state, more than 1.8 million people have been affected by floods after five days of incessant downpours.

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters he had instructed district officials to provide “all necessary help and relief” to those caught in the flooding.

Flooding in Bangladesh worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary reprieve from the rains the previous afternoon, Sylhet region chief government administrator Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.

“The situation is bad. More than four million people have been stranded by flood water,” Hossain said, adding that nearly the entire region was without electricity. The flooding forced Bangladesh’s third-largest international airport in Sylhet to shut down on Friday. Around the regional capital, residents waded through waist-deep water along roads next to partially submerged stuck vehicles.

Forecasters said the floods were set to worsen over the next two days with heavy rains in Bangladesh and upstream in India’s northeast.

Before this week’s rains, the Sylhet region was still recovering from its worst floods in nearly two decades late last month, when at least 10 people were killed and four million others were affected.

Comments

Comments are closed.