SATKHIRA, Bangladesh Floods in southwest Bangladesh inundated new areas on Wednesday, damaging or destroying homes in nearly two dozen villages, officials said.
"New areas are being flooded with water released from other areas after the army had cut through dykes and roads," said Bhabesh Chanda, a local administrator in worst-hit Satkhira district.
"Unplanned roads, dykes and other barriers, especially built to protect shrimp farms, were holding back the floodwaters," he said.
The floods, which struck usually dry southwest in the last week of September, have killed more than 130 people, left over two million homeless and caused huge losses to the impoverished nation's economy.
Large areas remain flooded though the levels have been falling and the army has been asked to remove some flood barriers to drain some of the worst-hit areas.
But it is expected to take weeks or months before all of the flood waters recede, particularly with more monsoon rains expected.
"There is no sign of recession of the flood in some areas. It has come to stay for months," said school teacher Azizur Rahman.
On Wednesday, rain drenched thousands of families living in the open, increasing the suffering of people perched on rooftops, on river embankments and other high ground.
"They are just helpless ... facing the cruelty of nature," said an official in Satkhira.
Wednesday's rain also hampered relief efforts and health services to flood victims in and outside shelters, where disease and hunger were spreading, officials and relief operators said.
Two people died of diarrhoea and hundreds were affected by the disease at Tala area of Satkhira district, Chanda said on Wednesday.
Unofficial sources said more than 25 people died of flood-borne diseases, including diarrhoea, in Satkhira district alone.
Conditions in areas where the floods had receded also remained critical, officials said.
"There is not a single crop plant standing, not a fruit grove alive or any house worth putting your head into," said Anwarul Islam, another school teacher.
The three weeks of flooding has also turned many wealthy farmers and traders into paupers.
"I have lost up to 400 million taka ($7.4 million) invested in 40 shrimp projects," said Abdur Rouf in Satkhira. "Maybe I will never be well-off again," he told Reuters.
He said the floods in the southwest were unprecedented.
"I have not seen a flood here in my entire life," said 75-year-old farmer Hashmat Ali. "When it came, we really did not know what to do." Ali was among several thousand people rescued by soldiers and taken to flood shelters, where they eat at best one meal a day.
Bangladesh's worst floods in 1998 engulfed three-quarters of the country but spared the southwest. Over 3,000 people were killed in those floods.
(Reuter)