NEW DELHI — Heavy monsoon rains in India and Bangladesh have flooded an airport, knocking down cell towers, bridges and power lines, cutting off communications for millions and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands.
At least 116 people have died in floods and lightning strikes, as well as landslides, which have made rescue operations even more difficult, officials said.
These latest catastrophic floods come less than a month after extreme rainfall flooded cities, causing widespread misery in the region.
On Monday, officials in Assam, a state in northeastern India bordering Bangladesh, said all 33 districts of the state were affected by the flooding, blaming them for undoing nearly a decade of road-building progress. , bridges and other infrastructure connecting remote cities. and villages scattered throughout the state’s lush green mountains. At least 73 people have died as a result of the disaster in the state, according to news reports.
More than 400 rescue workers have been deployed to the state, said HPS Kandari, a commander of India’s National Disaster Response Force.
In the neighboring state of Meghalaya, the towns of Cherrapunji and Mawsynram, in one of the wettest regions in the world, were hit by extremely heavy rainfall. On Friday, Mawsynram recorded about 40 centimeters of rain in one day, one of the wettest in June since 1966. At least five people in one family were killed in a landslide on Monday in the nearby Dangar area, said Conrad Sangma, the head of state. prime minister, said: Twitter†
The record-breaking rain in the state has also led to major flooding across the border in Bangladesh, where rivers have already overflowed. “We haven’t seen this much rain in many, many years,” says Dr. Tarekul Islam, a professor at the Institute of Water and Flood Management of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka, the capital.
dr. Islam said the heavy rains have inundated the Sylhet region, one of the worst affected regions since last month, when waters from the Brahmaputra and other rivers burst their banks and flooded large swaths of the low-lying country of about 170 million people.
More than four million people in northeastern Bangladesh have been made homeless since the floods in May, including 1.6 million children, the United Nations Children’s Fund said in a press release on Monday. “Children now need safe drinking water,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF representative in Bangladesh. “Preventing deadly waterborne diseases is one of many critical concerns.”
At least 38 people have died in Bangladesh as a result of the latest floods, according to the Foundation for Disaster Forum, a Dhaka-based nonprofit that provides food and shelter to people in Sylhet. Days of rainfall and flooding have brought down cell towers and forced authorities to breach power lines to prevent electrocution.
Selim Miah, a farmer living in Sylhet’s Gowainghat district, said his house was washed away by the flooding.
All his family of ten had at this point, he said, was puffed rice, molasses and a two-liter bottle of drinking water, which aid workers had provided them.
“I’ve never seen such a big flood,” said 29-year-old Mr. miah. “When the water entered our living room, we put everything we had on the tin roof, including our livestock. But we couldn’t stay that way because the water also reached the roof.”
Over the weekend, with power lines still disconnected, the Ministry of Health of Bangladesh ordered officials in Sylhet to provide critical power support to Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College, one of the region’s main hospitals, using diesel generators. .
One of Bangladesh’s largest airports, Osmani International Airport in Sylhet, was still under water on Monday after stormwater forced officials to cancel all flights on Friday.
Bangladeshi officials said on Monday that hundreds of thousands of people had been forced to leave their homes because of the flooding and were trying to rescue those who were still stranded.
“We have evacuated more than 300,000 people who were stranded,” said Mosharraf Hossain, a government official in the Sylhet region. “Many of them have lost their tin and bamboo houses.”
Karan Deep Singh reported from New Delhi, and Saif Hasnat from Dhaka, Bangladesh.