A third of Bangladesh is underwater after some of the heaviest rains in a decade, officials said.
Almost four million people have also been affected by monsoon floods in South Asia.
The monsoon, which generally falls from June to September, is crucial to the economy of the Indian subcontinent, but it also causes widespread death and destruction in the region each year.
“This will be the worst flood in a decade,” Arifuzzaman Bhuiyan, head of the Bangladesh Flood Forecasting and Warning Center, told AFP news agency.
The floods started late last month, and after a brief relaxation they continued to worsen, destroying crops and driving people out of their homes in various impoverished regions.
Bangladesh is crossed by 230 rivers, including 53 shared with India.
This aerial photo shows houses flooded in Sunamgong on July 14 [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP]
Heavy rains have inflated two main Himalayan river systems, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, which flow through India and Bangladesh.
Bhuiyan said that about a third of flood-prone Bangladesh, a delta nation crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, was underwater, and at least 1.5 million people were affected, with village houses and roads flooded.
“The flood water is constantly increasing. Neither we nor our livestock can get out. Therefore, I am using a boat to get out. We also have problems regarding food. The cooking ovens have been flooded. Even our beds they are also underwater ” Samsud Doha, farmer, said.
In north central Bangladesh, the Brahmaputra River was almost 40 cm (15.7 inches) higher than normal and threatened to burst its banks, district administrator Farook Ahmed told AFP.
Most of the villagers were trying to stay close to their flood-damaged homes, but some 15,000 had fled the severely affected areas, authorities said.
Another farmer, Rabiul Islam, said: “Our houses have been flooded. We had a small road left that was destroyed last night. So we are taking away all of our crops like rice, corn and other goods.”
People ride a boat through flooded water in Sunamgong on July 14 [Munir Uz zaman/AFP]
With a 10-day forecast pointing to rising waters, Bhuiyan said that if more rivers explode on its banks, about 40 percent of the nation could be flooded “in the worst case.”
In Assam, northeast India, more than 2.1 million people have been affected since mid-May.
At least 50 people have died so far, 12 last week due to flooding, with tens of thousands of mostly rural residents evacuated to relief camps, authorities said.
“We have two challenges here: one is COVID-19 and the other is flood,” the head of a local rescue team, Abhijeet Kumar Verma, told AFP.
In Nepal, at least 50 people died in landslides and floods caused by monsoon rains, with razed houses and damaged roads and bridges.
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