A RIVER burst its banks and surged through 25 villages while residents slept in northern Bangladesh yesterday, killing 13 - mostly children - as homes, crops and trees were washed away.

A river burst its banks and surged through 25 villages while residents slept in northern Bangladesh today, killing 13 people – mostly children – as homes, crops and trees were washed away.

Six more children have drowned in flood waters in Bangladesh, taking to 70 the death toll from the monsoon deluge which marooned more than a million people, officials said today.