Heavy monsoon rains that battered Bangladesh and India have killed at least 59 people and led to flooding that has left millions in dire straits, authorities said on Saturday.
Floods regularly threaten millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh. But, according to experts, climate change is increasing their frequency, severity and suddenness.
Most of the northeast of the country is under water and troops have been deployed to evacuate residents who find themselves isolated.
Schools have been turned into emergency shelters to accommodate residents of villages that were flooded within hours following heavy flooding.
The whole village was underwater on Friday morning and we were all stucksaid Lokman, whose family lives in the village of Companyganj.
After waiting all day on the roof of our house, a neighbor rescued us with a makeshift boat. My mother said she had never seen such floods in her entire lifeadded the young man of 23 years.
Asma Akter, another woman rescued from the rising waters, said her family could not eat for two days.
The water rose so fast that we couldn’t take any of our thingsshe testified.
Lightning accompanying the thunderstorms has killed at least 21 people in Bangladesh since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.
Among them, three children between the ages of 12 and 14 were struck by lightning in the town of Nandail on Friday, local police chief Mizanur Rahman said.
Four other people were killed in landslides in the port city of Chittagong, police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP.
At least 16 people have died since Thursday in India’s northeast state of Meghalaya following landslides and heavy flooding that submerged roads, Conrad Sangma announced on Twitter. minister of that state.
In neighboring Assam state, more than 2.6 million people have been affected by flooding after five days of relentless rain.
Eighteen people have died in floods and landslides in Assam since Thursday, according to the state disaster agency, and nearly 7,500 people were rescued on Saturday.
The state’s prime minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, told the press that he asked district officials to provide all necessary help and assistance people affected by the floods.
A situation that will get worse
On the flood front, the situation worsened on Saturday morning in Bangladesh after a temporary respite from the rains on Friday afternoon, Mosharraf Hossain, chief administrator of the government of the Sylhet region, told AFP.
The situation is bad. More than four million people have been stranded by the floodssaid Mr. Hossain, adding that almost the entire region is without electricity.
Floods forced Bangladesh’s third international airport, located in Sylhet, to close on Friday.
According to the weather forecast, the floods will worsen over the next two days due to heavy rainfall expected in Bangladesh and northeastern India.
Before this week’s rains, the Sylhet region was just recovering from the worst flooding it had seen in almost two decades at the end of May. They killed at least ten people and affected four million people.
France Media Agency
Source: Radio-Canada
