300,000 Bangladeshis Seek Refuge in Emergency Shelters

AFP/APP

Feni: Nearly 300,000 people in Bangladesh have taken refuge in emergency shelters due to floods that have inundated vast areas of the low-lying country, disaster officials reported on Saturday.

The flooding, triggered by heavy monsoon rains, has claimed at least 42 lives in Bangladesh and India since the beginning of the week, with many casualties resulting from landslides.

“My house is completely submerged,” said Lufton Nahar, 60, from a relief shelter in Feni, one of the hardest-hit districts near the border with India’s Tripura state. “Water is flowing above our roof. My brother brought us here by boat. If he hadn’t, we would have perished.”

Bangladesh, a nation of 170 million people crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, frequently experiences floods. While monsoon rains cause widespread destruction annually, climate change is altering weather patterns and increasing the frequency of extreme weather events.

Highways and rail lines have been damaged between the capital, Dhaka, and the main port city of Chittagong, complicating access to severely flooded districts and disrupting business activities.

The flooding comes just weeks after a student-led revolution toppled the government. Among the worst-affected areas is Cox’s Bazar, a district home to around a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.

On the Indian side of the border, Tripura state disaster agency official Sarat Kumad Das reported 24 deaths since Monday. Another 18 deaths have been confirmed in Bangladesh, according to disaster management ministry secretary Md Kamrul Hasan.