Sylhet: Officials said Saturday that monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India killed at least 41 people, caused catastrophic floods and left millions stranded.
Floods are a regular threat to millions of people in lowland Bangladesh, but experts say climate change increases their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.
The constant torrential rains of the past week have flooded vast areas of northeastern Bangladesh, and troops have been deployed to evacuate households separated from neighboring communities.
The school was transformed into a rescue shelter to house the entire village, which was flooded within hours by a river that suddenly ruptured the embankment.
“The whole village was submerged by the beginning of Friday and we were all stuck,” said Rockman, whose family lives in Kompanygangji village.
“After waiting a day on the roof of our house, a neighbor helped us on a makeshift boat. My mother said she had never seen such a flood in her lifetime. “It was,” added the 23-year-old.
Another woman rescued from the rising sea, Asma Actor, said her family was unable to eat for two days.
“The water came up so fast that we couldn’t bring ours,” she said. “And how can you cook something when everything is underwater?”
Lightning caused by the storm has killed at least 21 people across South Asia since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.
According to local police chief Misanur Rahman, among them were three children between the ages of 12 and 14 who were struck by lightning in the rural town of Nandale on Friday.
Police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP that four more people were killed when a landslide struck a house on the hillside of the port city of Chittagong.
At least 16 people have died in India’s remote Meghalaya since Thursday, state Prime Minister Conrad Sangma wrote on Twitter after a landslide and a surge in rivers that submerged roads.
Next to Assam, more than 1.8 million people have been flooded after five days of constant torrential rain.
Assam’s Prime Minister Himanta Biswa Salma told reporters that he had instructed district officials to provide “all the support and relief needed” to those involved in the flood.
– “The situation is bad” –
The floods in Bangladesh worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary grace period from the rain the afternoon before, Mosharaf Hossein, chief government officer in the Silet region, told AFP.
“The situation is bad. More than 4 million people are stuck in the flood,” Hossein said, adding that electricity was not available in almost the entire area.
The flood closed Bangladesh’s third largest Sylhet International Airport on Friday.
Around the provincial capital, residents were walking in waist-deep water along the road next to a partially submerged stack vehicle.
Forecasters said heavy rains fell in Bangladesh and upstream in northeastern India, and floods would worsen in the next two days.
Prior to this week’s rain, the Silet region was still recovering from the worst floods in almost 20 years late last month, killing at least 10 people and affecting 4 million people.
