The death toll from this week’s floods in Bangladesh has risen to eight, officials confirmed on Saturday, with more than 2 million people affected as water levels in major rivers swelled due to heavy rains.
This South Asian country of 170 million people, surrounded by hundreds of rivers, has seen more flooding in recent decades.
Due to climate change, rainfall has become irregular and glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are melting.
Two teenage boys died when a boat capsized in floodwaters in Shahjahanpur, police chief Sabuj Rana of the northern rural town told AFP.
He said, “There were nine people in the small boat. Seven people swam to safety. Two boys did not know how to swim. They drowned.”
Three other people died in two separate incidents when boats got entangled in power cables in floodwaters, Kurigram police chief Biswadeb Roy told AFP.
Three other people died in separate flood-related incidents across the country, officials told AFP earlier this week.
The government said it had opened hundreds of shelters for people displaced by the floods and sent food and relief materials to the worst-hit districts in the country’s northern region.
“More than 20 lakh people have been affected by the floods. Out of the country’s 64 districts, 17 have been affected,” Kamrul Hasan, secretary of the country’s disaster management ministry, told AFP.
Hasan said the flood situation in the north could worsen in the coming days, as the Brahmaputra River, one of Bangladesh’s main waterways, was flowing above danger level in some areas.
In the worst-hit Kurigram district, eight of nine rural towns were surrounded by floodwaters, local disaster and relief official Abdul Hai told AFP.
“We are used to living here amid floods. But this year the water was very high. The water level of the Brahmaputra river rose by six to eight feet (2-2.5 metres) in three days,” Abdul Gafur, a local councillor in the district, told AFP.
“Flood waters have submerged more than 80 percent of houses in my area. We are trying to deliver food, especially rice and edible oil. But there is a shortage of drinking water.”
Bangladesh lies in the middle of the annual summer monsoon, which provides 70–80 percent of South Asia’s annual rainfall, but also regularly brings deaths and destruction due to floods and landslides.
Rainfall is difficult to predict and varies widely, but scientists say monsoons are becoming stronger and more erratic because of climate change.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
