Floods hit Bangladesh as country regains its bearings after protests

Bangladesh has suffered frequent floods in recent decades and is among the countries most vulnerable to disasters. (AFP Photo)

DHAKA: Floods triggered by torrential rains have submerged parts of Bangladesh, disaster management officials said today, adding to the challenges facing the new government after weeks of political turmoil.

At least two people have died and hundreds of thousands are stranded in floods in at least eight districts in the south and east.

“Around 2.9 million people have been affected and more than 70,000 people have been taken to shelters,” Mohammad Nazmul Abedin, a senior official at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, told AFP.

Longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned as prime minister this month and fled to India after weeks of deadly student-led protests, ending 15 years of autocratic rule.

The South Asian country of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has experienced frequent flooding in recent decades.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index, the country is among the most vulnerable to disasters and climate change.

Annual monsoon rains cause massive destruction every year, but climate change is altering weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

The army and navy have been deployed, along with speedboats and helicopters, to rescue people stranded by the swollen rivers.

Much of the country is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, meander towards the sea after crossing India.

“The heaviest rains”

Neighbouring India’s foreign ministry has rejected accusations that it was responsible for the floods, denying that it deliberately released water from a dam upstream.

He said the catchment had experienced “the heaviest rains of this year in recent days” and the water flow downstream was due to “automatic releases”.

Asif Mahmud, one of the key leaders of the student protests that toppled Hasina and now sports minister in the caretaker cabinet, had accused India not only of welcoming Hasina but also of “creating a flood” by deliberately releasing water from dams.

India said this was “not factually correct”.

“Floods on the common rivers between India and Bangladesh are a common problem that is causing suffering to people on both sides and requires close mutual cooperation to resolve,” the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said in a statement.

Hasina’s regime has been marked by numerous human rights violations, including mass detention and extrajudicial executions of her political opponents.

But Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has favored Hasina over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it sees as closer to conservative Islamist groups.

Modi offered his support to Bangladesh’s new leader, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading the interim administration.