SUNAMGANI, Bangladesh — North-east
Bangladesh’s worst floods in nearly 20 years began receding on Sunday, but
rescue workers were struggling to help millions stranded by extreme weather
across the region that has killed around 60 people.
اضافة اعلان
Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in
low-lying Bangladesh and neighboring northeast
India, but many experts say that
climate change is increasing the frequency, ferocity, and unpredictability. In
the past week after heavy rains in India, floodwater breached a major
embankment in Bangladesh’s Sylhet region, affecting around two million people,
swamping dozens of villages and killing at least 10.
Arifuzzman Bhuiyan, head of the state-run Flood
Forecasting and Warning Centre, told AFP that the floods had hit some 70
percent of Sylhet district and about 60 percent of neighboring Sunamganj. “It
is one of the worst floods in the region,” he told AFP. But he said the
situation would improve further in the next few days after heavy rains stopped.
Police said that a scuffle broke out in the rural
town of Companyganj on Saturday as authorities stepped up relief operations for
the roughly two million people hit.
“There were more flood-affected people than the estimated relief packs. At
one point everyone started to snatch relief goods when police dispersed the
crowd,” local police chief Sukanto Chakrobarti told AFP.
Mozibur Rahman, head of Sylhet district, said that
the embankment washed away along the Bangladesh-India border was yet to be
repaired. “It is impossible to fix the embankment unless waterflow from India
plunges. The inundation scenario in Sylhet city has improved. But outer towns
are still underwater,” Rahman said. “We are trying to send relief and have
opened hundreds of shelters for the flood-hit people.”
Mofizul Islam, a resident of Sylhet city where floodwaters
were slowly subsiding, said that he fell off his motorbike after he hit a
pothole hidden under the water on Sunday. “It is very risky for the people who
are going out today,” Islam told AFP.
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