Six dead in floods in large parts of India and Bangladesh

According to officials, six people died in the floods in northeast India and neighboring Bangladesh on Wednesday. The heavy rains flooded the homes of more than a million people.

Monsoon rains cause great destruction every year, but experts say climate change is altering weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

According to disaster management authorities in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, four people have died in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of people killed there by successive rains since mid-May to 38.

In Bangladesh, landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains killed two people, including a Rohingya refugee, early Wednesday morning, police commander Jahirul Hoque Bhuiyan told AFP.

Bhuiyan said authorities in Bangladesh’s vast relief camps – home to about a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar – had evacuated some residents to safety.

The worst flooding occurred in the northeastern region of Sylhet, where more than 1.3 million people were affected, according to senior government official Abu Ahmed Siddique.

“Their villages and streets and most of their houses were submerged by the floods,” Abu Ahmed Siddique, the government administrator of the Sylhet region, told AFP.

Kamrul Hasan, secretary of Bangladesh’s disaster management ministry, said rivers upstream in India had swollen following rains.

Large parts of low-lying Bangladesh consist of deltas, as the Himalayan rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra slowly flow towards the sea after flowing through India.

Hasan told AFP that hundreds of emergency shelters had been opened around Sylhet for people displaced by the floods.

‘A higher level’

India’s meteorological department has issued warnings for Assam and neighboring states about the risk of further flash floods.

The floods damaged roads in the state and the Air Force rescued 13 fishermen stranded on an island.

Large parts of Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to the world’s largest population of Indian rhinos, were also flooded.

“The forest rangers have been put on alert,” park official Arun Vignesh told AFP. “Hundreds of animals have started crossing the highway in search of higher ground.”

The summer monsoon brings 70 to 80 percent of South Asia’s annual rainfall, but also brings death and destruction through floods and landslides.

Rainfall is difficult to predict and varies considerably, but scientists believe that climate change is making the monsoon stronger and more unpredictable.

Last week, at least 14 people were killed in Nepal when rains triggered landslides, lightning strikes and floods.

At least nine people died in a landslide in Bangladesh in June.

In the same month, six people were killed in flash floods and landslides in Sikkim, an Indian state at the foot of the Himalayas bordering China.

© 2024 AFP