Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 41 people and triggered devastating floods that have left millions stranded, officials said on Saturday.
Floods are a common threat to millions of people in the lowlands of Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing in frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.
Relentless downpours over the past week have flooded large areas of northeastern Bangladesh, with troops deployed to evacuate isolated homes from neighboring communities.
Schools have become relief shelters to house entire villages flooded in a matter of hours by rivers that suddenly broke their banks.
“The whole village was flooded in the early hours of Friday and we were all stranded,” Lokman, whose family lives in the village of Companiganj, told AFP news agency.
“After waiting for a whole 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 life, “she said.
Asma Akter, another woman rescued from the rising waters, said her family had been unable to eat for two days.
“The water went up so fast we couldn’t carry any of our stuff,” he said. “And how can you cook anything when everything is underwater?”
Thunderstorms have killed at least 21 people across the South Asian country since Friday afternoon, police officials told AFP.
Among them were three children between the ages of 12 and 14 who were struck by lightning on Friday in the rural town of Nandail, local police chief Mizanur Rahman said.
Four more people were killed when landslides hit their hilltop houses in the port city of Chittagong, police inspector Nurul Islam told AFP.
Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, who reports from Khulna to Bangladesh, said the situation was dire in many districts.
“There have been torrential rains over the last few days that have made things very bad. But now there has been a respite from the rain,” Chowdhury said.
“The army and naval personnel are trying to rescue people trapped. Food and drinking water are desperately needed, especially in the remote village. Electricity has been restored in some of the affected areas. We also know that some hospitals have been flooded. it complicated the situation, “he said.
At least 16 people have been killed since Thursday in the remote Meghalaya of India, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma wrote on Twitter after the landslide and rising water from rivers that they submerged the roads.
Along with the state of Assam, more than 1.8 million people have been affected by the floods after five days of incessant rain.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters he had instructed district officials to provide “all necessary help and relief” to those trapped by the flood.
People wade down a road in a flooded area after heavy monsoon rains in Sylhet [AFP]
‘The situation is bad’
Floods in Bangladesh worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary break from the rains of the previous afternoon, Sylhet region chief administrator Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.
“It simply came to our notice then. More than four million people have been stranded by flood water, “Hossain said, adding that almost the entire region was without electricity.
Floods forced the closure of Bangladesh’s third largest international airport in Sylhet on Friday.
Meteorologists said the floods would worsen over the next two days with heavy rains in Bangladesh and upstream waters in northeast India.
Prior to this week’s rains, the Sylhet region was still recovering from its worst floods in nearly two decades at the end of last month, when at least 10 people died and four million more were affected.
Both countries have called on the military to help with the severe flooding, which could worsen as rain is expected to continue over the weekend.
“We expect moderate to heavy rainfall in various parts of Assam until Sunday. The volume of rainfall is unprecedented,” said Sanjay O’Neil, an official at Gauhati Weather Station, the capital of Assam.
In Bangladesh, the districts near the Indian border have been the hardest hit.
Water levels in the country’s major rivers were rising, according to the Flood Forecast and Alert Center in Dhaka, the country’s capital. The country has about 130 rivers.
The center said the flood situation is likely to deteriorate in the most affected districts of Sunamganj and Sylhet in the northeast region, as well as in the districts of Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Rangpur in northern Bangladesh.