Nearly 300,000 people in Bangladesh shelters due to floods

About 285,000 people in Bangladesh have fled flooding to emergency shelters, rescue officials said Saturday. The floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains, have killed at least 42 people in the Southeast Asian country and India since the start of the week, many in landslides.

Twenty-four people have died in the Indian state of Tripura since Monday, the head of the state’s disaster management agency, Sarat Kumad Das, told AFP. In Bangladesh, 18 others have been killed, according to Kamrul Hasan, secretary of the disaster management ministry. Hasan also said 4.5 million people had been affected by the floods.

A low-lying country, Bangladesh (170 million inhabitants) is crossed by hundreds of rivers and a large part of its territory is made up of the deltas of the great Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Several tributaries of these two rivers continue to overflow but forecasts predict that rain will decrease in the coming days. Access to the flooded districts is hampered by damage to the highways and railways linking the capital Dhaka and Chittagong, the country’s main port city.

Bangladesh is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change-related disasters. Monsoon rains cause considerable damage every year, but global warming is increasing their scale and frequency.