Bangladesh flood death toll crosses 1,000

BANGLADESH: The death toll from flooding this year in impoverished Bangladesh crossed 1,000 with a further 2.5 million people displaced or marooned by rising river waters, officials said.

The Brahmaputra and the Ganges began swelling again early this week, bursting their banks and submerging thousands of villages again in more than a third of the country, the government flood centre said.

The government’s health department said in the last two days 23 people have died in the low-lying nation, mostly drowning in swirling flood water, taking this year’s monsoon death toll to 1,023.

The centre said the flooding situation would improve in the northern districts, but the receding water would submerge more areas in the central and southern region.

Fed by heavy rains and melting glaciers in the Himalayas, the Brahmaputra River and the Ganges were flowing around 100 centimetres (40 inches) above danger levels in the central region, the centre said.

Meanwhile Nearly 13.5 million people have been marooned or displaced by floods in India and Bangladesh, officials said on Saturday.

The flooding in South Asia caused by the June-to-September monsoon has been described as the worst in decades, with more than 2,200 people killed by floods and rains in India since it started.

The floods have hit about 10,000 villages in India’s northeastern Assam state, where three people died in landslides triggered by pounding rains, taking the death toll since July in the region to 77.

“The overall situation is still grim with an estimated 11 million people displaced by floods since July,” state rehabilitation minister Bhumidhar Barman told AFP.

Dhaka, New Delhi, Sunday, AFP