Bangladesh, India floods kill over 100; millions in need of aid

Agencies Floodwaters have inundated more of Bangladesh and northeast India, officials say, as authorities struggle to reach more than 9.5 million people s...

Agencies Floodwaters have inundated more of Bangladesh and northeast India, officials say, as authorities struggle to reach more than 9.5 million people stranded with little food and drinking water after days of intense rain.Particularly heavy monsoon rain has brought the worst floods in decades in some parts of low-lying Bangladesh and India’s Assam state, killing more than 100 people over the past two weeks.Monsoon rains in South Asia typically begin in June. But this year heavy downpours lashed northeastern India and Bangladesh as early as March, triggering floods as early as April in Bangladesh.With rising global temperatures due to climate change, experts say the monsoon is becoming more variable, meaning that much of the rain that would typically fall in a season is arriving in a shorter period.Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina flew over some of the flood-hit areas on Tuesday, looking down on huge tracts covered by brown water, broken up by an occasional outcrop of land, television footage showed.So far, Bangladesh authorities have reported at least 32 deaths.In Sylhet, one of the worst-hit areas in the extreme northeast of the country near the border with India, villagers waded, swam and paddled makeshift rafts or small skiffs to a boat delivering aid that had moored to one shelter, its ground floor covered half way to the ceiling with water.UNICEF said about four million people have been cut off by the floods in the country’s northeast and are in urgent need of help.The UN agency also said 90 percent of its health facilities have been inundated and cases of waterborne diseases are increasing, as it urgently sought $2.5m to supply water purification tablets, emergency medical supplies and water containers.“Four million people, including 1.6 million children, stranded by flash floods in northeastern Bangladesh are in urgent need of help,” UNICEF said in a statement.In some areas, the Bangladesh military dropped sacks of relief supplies from helicopters to people waiting on rooftops, TV footage showed.