Monsoon rains and river inflows from upstream India have caused widespread flooding in northeastern Bangladesh, leaving more than two million people stranded and the situation could worsen, officials said on Friday.
An aerial view of flooded areas in Kompaniganj, Sylhet district, on June 20, 2024. Heavy rains and swollen rivers caused by flooding upstream in India have inundated densely populated areas in Sylhet. (AFP)
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said people trapped in the area, including more than 772,000 children, were in urgent need of assistance.
“Children are among the most vulnerable, facing high risks of drowning, malnutrition, deadly water-borne diseases, the trauma of displacement and possible abuse in overcrowded shelters,” said UNICEF Bangladesh Representative Sheldon Yett.
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The Bangladesh Meteorological Department has forecast further heavy rains in the coming days, which could worsen flooding and trigger landslides in hilly areas.
At least 10 people, including eight Rohingya Muslims, were killed on Wednesday when heavy monsoon rains triggered a landslide in a refugee camp in southern Bangladesh.
The northeastern region has been particularly hard hit, with heavy rains and upstream waters from India causing widespread flooding. Bangladesh is still recovering from a cyclone that hit its southern coast late last month.
“We fear it will be as devastating as the 2022 floods,” said Sylhet resident Shameem Chowdhury, referring to the region's worst floods in 122 years.
Television footage showed rains causing water levels in four rivers in the region to rise to dangerously high levels, flooding large swathes of fields and villages in Sylhet city and sending people wading through knee-deep water.
Agriculture ministry officials said vast swathes of land were underwater and if the flooding continued for a long period of time it posed a major threat to crops.
According to UNICEF, the floods have also caused extensive damage to infrastructure, with more than 810 government schools in Sylhet Division submerged and around 500 being used as evacuation centres, and around 140 community health centres inundated, disrupting basic medical services.
A 2015 analysis by the World Bank Institute estimated that about 3.5 million people are at risk of annual river flooding in Bangladesh, one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, and scientists believe that climate change is making such devastating events worse.
