DHAKA, BANGLADESH (AP) — Army troops have been called to rescue thousands of people stranded by massive floods that have devastated northeastern India and Bangladesh, leaving millions of homes submerged and disrupting transport links, authorities said on Saturday With.
In India’s Assam state, at least nine people were killed in the floods and 2 million saw their homes flooded, according to the state’s disaster management agency. At least nine people have been killed in lightning strikes in parts of neighboring Bangladesh since Friday.
Both countries have appealed to their militaries for help as more flooding threatens and rain is expected to continue over the weekend.
In Sylhet, northeast Bangladesh, on the banks of the Surma River, children sat on a window of a flooded home while other family members gathered on a bed in their flooded home, wondering how they were going to endure the ordeal.
“How can we eat (in this condition)?” said Anjuman Ara Begum standing in the water in her kitchen. “We live on muri (puffed rice) and chira (flat rice) and other things given by people. what else can we do We can’t cook.”
According to Hafiz Ahmed, the airport manager, flights at Osmani International Airport in Sylhet have been suspended for three days as flood waters almost reached the runway. The Sylhet Sunamganj highway was also flooded, but motorbikes drove along.
Water levels rose in all major rivers across the country, according to the Flood Prediction and Warning Center in the capital Dhaka. The country has about 130 rivers.
The center said the flooding situation is likely to worsen in the hardest-hit Sunamganj and Sylhet districts in the north-eastern region, as well as Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Rangpur districts in northern Bangladesh.
The Brahmaputra, one of Asia’s largest rivers, broke its mud dams, flooding 3,000 villages and farmlands in 28 of Assam’s 33 districts across the border in India.
“We expect moderate to heavy rains in several parts of Assam through Sunday. The amount of rainfall was unprecedented,” said Sanjay O’Neil, an official at the meteorological station in Gauhati, the capital of Assam.
Several train services have been canceled in India amid incessant rain over the past five days. In the town of Haflong in southern Assam, the train station was submerged and flooded rivers deposited mud and silt along the tracks.
The Indian Army has been mobilized to assist disaster relief organizations in rescuing stranded people and providing food and other essential supplies. Soldiers used speedboats and inflatable boats to navigate underwater areas.
Last month, a pre-monsoon flash flood triggered by a burst of water from the north-eastern states of India hit the northern and north-eastern regions of Bangladesh, destroying crops and damaging houses and roads. The country was just beginning to recover when renewed rains flooded the same areas this week.
Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people, is low-lying and vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes, made worse by climate change. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, around 17% of Bangladesh’s people would need to be relocated over the next decade if global warming continues at the current rate.
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Hussain reported from Gauhati, India.