Dozens dead and thousands homeless amid floods in Bangladesh and India

Flood-affected people walk to safer places from their marooned Tarabari village, west of Gauhati, in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam (Anupam Nath/AP)

Villagers in north-eastern Bangladesh have crowded makeshift refugee centres and scrambled to meet boats arriving with food and fresh water as massive floods, which have killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands there and in neighbouring India, continued to wreak havoc.

In Sylhet, one of the worst-hit areas in the extreme north east 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.