Monsoon rainfall-triggered floods in deltaic Bangladesh and upstream Indian regions killed at least 15 people and affected over four million others in this country, posing a huge administrative challenge to the newly installed interim government amid a political transition.

Several rivers are flowing above the danger mark, particularly in north-eastern, eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh inundating many cities and towns apart from several hundred villages killing people, damaging the infrastructures and disrupting communication lines.

“At least 15 people have been killed and 4.8 million people in as many as 11 districts have been affected by floods triggered by heavy rains in Bangladesh,” state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) said quoting Md Kamrul Hasan, secretary of the Disaster Management Ministry.

Rescue operations in the flood-affected areas are being carried out by the army, navy, coast guard, Border Guards, Bangladesh (BGB), fire services, police as well as students, Hasan told media persons.

More than a dozen places across these areas received over 60 mm of rainfall, ranging from 151 mm at Cox’s Bazar to 62 in Gopalganj, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department and forecast heavy rainfall in various regions of the country over the next three days due to active monsoon conditions over the Bay of Bengal, according to the Dhaka Tribune newspaper.

Bangladesh is crisscrossed by more than 200 rivers, 54 of them being transboundary rivers with upper riparian India, in four major basins. A depression (a system that brings in copious rainfall) in the Bay of Bengal has led to the current deluge with rivers in two basins – the north-eastern Meghna Basin and south-western Chattrogram Hills Basin – flowing above the danger mark.

Apart from the torrential rains, the overflowing rivers, El Nino and climate change phenomenon were the factors responsible for widespread flooding in the country, weather experts said on Friday.

A Disaster Management Ministry spokesperson said: “We are monitoring the flood situation and relief activities from our control room in Dhaka.” Communications with the central Feni district, which is located almost midway between the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chattogram, was virtually cut off while flood waters largely submerged the district headquarters and the collapsed electricity supply system disrupted the telecommunication lines.

“The cross border Khowai in (northeastern) Habiganj now flows 199 centimetres or nearly 2 metres above the danger marks at places, the Gumti (in eastern Bangladesh) flow at 118 centimetres above danger mark and Halda in (southeastern) Chattagram 1 metre at places,” a spokesman of the Flood Warning and Forecasting Centre (FFWC) said about the situation on Friday afternoon.

The FFWC office came under criticism for failure to predict the situation even as the officials attributed the situation to a lack of information from counterparts in the upstream Indian region.

According to local media reports, the situation became bizarre as local government representatives were unavailable or on the run because of their political affiliation after the ouster of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime.

Yunus, 84, assumed charge on August 8 soon after Hasina, 76, stepped down on August 5 and fled to India amidst a mass uprising that followed attacks, vandalism and killings of many people loyal to her since last month.

The floods have hit the country as Yunus is overhauling the bureaucracy by changing their heads and sacking more than 1,800 elected local government representatives across the country.

Meanwhile, hundreds of vehicles, including passenger bus services and goods lorries, plying from the Chattogram port city to Dhaka and elsewhere were stranded due to the sudden rush of water blocking the two major highways, which in turn not just isolated people but hampered the rescue efforts.

“I have never seen or heard of any such flood in (central) Feni district in my life,” 93-year-old income tax lawyer Kazi Golam Manuddin told PTI from Feni – about 130 km southeast of Dhaka, near Bangladesh-India border with Tripura on the other side - on phone as he was forced to move out of his home to take refuge in a relatively dry area.

Disaster management officials said most of the deaths were caused by drowning while electrocution and felling of trees were other reasons for the casualties but the sudden deluge caused by gushing waters split many families while many people were forced to take refuge on highways or rooftops.

Firefighters with the help of local residents, Red Crescent volunteers, police, and army troops rescued many stranded people in their rubber crafts. At one place a minor child was seen standing in chest-deep water and at another spot a young mother was seen sitting on a pile of bricks with her infant child on her lap being isolated from the rest of their families before being rescued.

Even when several experts attributed the sudden flooding to climate change, a 2015 World Bank study estimated that 3.5 million people in tropical Bangladesh are vulnerable (to floods) because of its geophysical topography.

According to FFWC, the most affected districts in Bangladesh included eastern or centre-east Cumilla, Feni, north-eastern Moulvibazar, Habiganj and south-eastern Chattrogram, where five major rivers were flowing above danger levels.

Earlier on Thursday, Yunus chaired a meeting of his advisory council, equivalent to the cabinet, and asked the members to stand by the flood-hit people as the flood situation deteriorated in the country.

Yunus also proposed a high-level Bangladesh-India committee for joint flood management as New Delhi’s envoy in Dhaka Pranay Verma paid a courtesy call on him at his Jamuna office here.

Verma, on the other hand, told the chief adviser that the flood in India’s Tripura state bordering Bangladesh was “very unprecedented” as it displaced more than 50,000 people and wreaked havoc on both sides of the Bangladesh-India border.

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