Thousands flee flooded homes

Flooding caused by a week of monsoon rains left 20 people dead, forced tens of thousands of villagers from their homes and damaged crops and roads across Bangladesh, relief officials said today.

Conditions are likely to deteriorate as flood waters have begun pouring down from the Himalayan region through neighbouring India, according to the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in Dhaka.

Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 130 million people, has hundreds of rivers and tributaries which originate in the Himalayas, run through India and drain into the Bay of Bengal. Monsoon floods are common.

Swirling flood waters swept away nine young children in the northern region which has been hardest hit by the flooding that started last week, relief officials said.

Three people died in a rain-triggered mudslide in the southern town of Cox’s Bazar, while eight people died of diarrhoea caused by polluted flood waters in eastern Bangladesh.

At least 50,000 people left their flooded homes to take refuge in schools or beside roads located on higher ground in the north, close to the flood-affected Indian states of Assam and West Bengal, said relief official Khairul Anam.

Rain-swollen rivers have flooded hundreds more villages across the north, east and west affecting nearly 500,000 inhabitants. The floods destroyed many mud-and-straw houses, left many villagers stranded in water-logged homes and caused widespread damage to rice crops and livestock, officials said.

Relief workers have distributed plastic sheets among at least 10,000 people camped in the open under torrential rain, said Kamrul Islam, a government official in Rangpur, 155 miles north of the capital Dhaka.

‘‘But there is a serious scarcity of safe drinking water,’’ he said.

Floodwaters have covered many wells in the worst hit districts driving many local residents to drink polluted water and become afflicted with diarrhoea, Islam said.

People were using boats and rafts to move around as dirt roads were damaged or submerged.