Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis took refuge in emergency shelters on Saturday as floods inundated vast areas of the country, emergency officials said.
According to the criteria of
The floods were a result of heavy monsoon rains, and claimed at least 42 lives in Bangladesh. and India since the beginning of the week, in many cases due to the avalanches they caused.
Bangladesh, a country of 170 million people, is crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and has experienced frequent flooding in recent decades. “285,000 people are living in emergency shelters,” said Kamrul Hasan, secretary of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The monsoon causes significant damage every year, but climate change is altering weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
Roads and railway lines were damaged between the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong, making access to severely flooded districts difficult and disrupting commercial activity.
Among the worst-affected areas is Cox’s Bazar, a district that is home to nearly a million Rohingya refugees from Burma. Much of
Bangladesh is made up of deltas, where the great rivers of the Himalayas, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, flow into the sea after passing through India.
Several tributaries of these two rivers are still overflowing. According to weather forecasts, the rain is likely to ease in the coming days.
AFP AGENCY
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