Via
www.reuters.com
DHAKA
(Reuters) - At least 100 people have died and 250,000 left stranded by flash
floods and landslides in Bangladesh set off by the heaviest rain in years,
police and officials said on Wednesday.The low-lying and densely populated
country, which is in its wet season, has been battered by five days of
torrential downpours.
The
deaths took place late on Tuesday and on Wednesday. Most were caused by
landslides, others by wall collapses, lightning strikes and surges of
floodwater. Army, police and fire brigade personnel were helping in rescue
efforts.Weather officials said more rain was expected over the next few days.
Hundreds
of homes have been washed away, while authorities have moved many families from
shanty housing and told others to leave quickly.At least 23 people were killed
in and around the southeastern port city of Chittagong, while 36 died in
Bandarban in an area known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts."Several more
people are feared trapped in hillside homes buried under heaps of mud. Rescue
operations are continuing," Chittagong Deputy Commissioner Faiz Ahmed
said.
A
further 38 died in the coastal district of Cox's Bazar near the Myanmar border,
officials and police said.Officials in the affected areas said about 100 people
were missing, many swept away by floodwater, and about 200 injured.
MAROONED
In
Sylhet, a rice and tea-growing area in the northeast, houses were filled by up
to three feet (one metre) of floodwater, and residents were forced to perch on
boats or scramble to high ground. Three children were reported killed.
Flooding
also hit districts northwest of the capital Dhaka.
The
downpours lashed the borders with Myanmar and India, with the weather office
recording 463 mm (18.2 inches) in Chittagong over the past 24 hours.
"We
are having the worst rainfall in many years," said Jainul Bari, district
commissioner for Cox's Bazar.
Disaster
control officials said about 150,000 people had been marooned by the floods in
the southeast while 50,000 were stranded in Sylhet.
About
50,000 were reported stranded in their flooded homes in the northern districts
of Gaibandha and Kurigram.
Local
television showed villagers trudging through waist-high water to relief camps
while some moved their cattle on to the roofs of buildings for safety.
Farming
officials said it was too early to gauge crop damage. "In flash floods,
water recedes soon after the rain stops, so we don't anticipate any major
damage to rice and other crops," one official said.
Most
road and rail links between Chittagong and the rest of the country were
suspended late on Tuesday, while Chittagong airport was closed after part of
the runway was flooded.
Authorities
have started distributing food, drinking water and medicine among survivors.
"The government has allocated about 750 tonnes of rice and 6.6 million
taka for the affected people," Atiqur Rahman, a senior disaster ministry
official, said.
(Additional
reporting by Ruma Paul, Nurul Islam in COX'S BAZAR and Raju Ahmed in SYLHET;
Editing by Pravin Char)
Read
more @ reuters.com
Article
belongs to the respective news writers of reuters.com and reuters.com
Used
for public information only.
0 Responses:
Post a Comment