Bangladesh Floods Displace Thousands

ANCHOR:
Two weeks of incessant flooding has killed 12 people in Bangladesh and nearly 200,000 have been forced from their homes. Here's the update.

STORY:
Flood waters continue to rise due to heavy rains resulting in acute shortages of drinking water and medicines.

Villagers can not even cook, as their houses are under waist-deep water. Around 100,000 hectares of farmland have been submerged.

Health officials say water-borne diseases such as dysentery, skin diseases and diarrhea have broken out in many areas and army and medical personnel are distributing medicines.

In the sub-district of Sariakandi in Bogra, villagers are repairing a broken embankment dam which worsened flooding from the river Jamuna.

[Sirajul Hoq, Bangladesh Water Development Authority]:
"We are trying to reconstruct it so that the people inside the embankment do not suffer more. We hope by the end of the day we will be able to close it."

Many villagers say they are not getting any help from authorities.

[Aleya Begum, Villager]:
"Our houses and fields are all in the water. We have taken shelter with our relatives here. We had lost everything in the water."

The deluge has swamped one-third of the country's districts, affecting nearly four million people.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• ntd
• bangladesh
• floods
• victims
• catastrophe