THE death toll from floods in Bangladesh this week has risen to eight, affecting more than two million people following heavy rains caused major rivers to overflow their banks.
The South Asian country of 170 million people, crossed by hundreds of rivers, has experienced repeated flooding disasters in recent decades.
Climate change has made rainfall more erratic and caused glaciers in the upper Himalayas to melt.
“Two teenage boys died when a boat capsized in the waters off Shahjadur,” said police chief of the northern rural town Sabuj Rana.
“There were nine people in the small boat. Seven swam to safety. Two boys might not swim. They drowned,” he added.
Bishwadeb Roy, a police chief in Kurigram, said three other people died in two separate electrocution incidents following their boat became entangled in electric cables in floodwaters.
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“Three other people died in separate flood-related incidents across the country,” he said.
The government said it had opened hundreds of shelters for people displaced by the waters and sent food and aid to the worst-hit districts in the country’s north.
“More than two million people have been affected by the floods. Seventeen of the country’s 64 districts have been affected,” said Kamrul Hasan, secretary of the disaster management ministry.
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Hasan said the flood situation may worsen in the northern region in the coming days as the Brahmaputra, one of Bangladesh’s main waterways, is flowing above the danger level in some areas.
In the worst-hit Kurigram district, eight of the nine rural towns were submerged in floodwaters.
“We live with floods here. But this year the water is very high. In three days, the Brahmaputra rose by six to eight feet (2-2.5 meters),” said Abdul Gafur, a local councillor in the district.
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“Flood water has inundated more than 80 percent of the houses in my area. We are trying to send food, especially rice and vegetable oil. But now there is a drinking water crisis,” he said.
Bangladesh is experiencing the annual summer monsoon, which brings 70-80 percent of South Asia’s annual rainfall, as well as frequent death and destruction from floods and landslides.
Rainfall is difficult to predict and highly variable, but scientists say climate change is making the monsoons stronger and more unpredictable. (France24/Z-10)
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