Heavy monsoon downpours in Bangladesh’s northeastern and northern regions have stranded hundreds of thousands of people, forcing the authorities to deploy military soldiers for evacuation and relief work, official statements and news reports said early on Saturday.

The Bangladesh military’s Inter Service Public Relations office said on its website that the soldiers have been deployed as floods have devastated the northeastern districts of Sunamganj and Sylhet, cutting off people from electricity as thousands of homes have been inundated.

At least nine people died across the delta nation on Friday after lightning struck amid rainfalls, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported.

In a statement, the governments Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre in Dhaka, said on Friday that water in all major rivers across the country was rising. The country has about 130 rivers.

The centre said the flood situation is likely to deteriorate over the next 24 hours in the Sunamganj, Sylhet districts in the northeastern region as well as in Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Rangpur districts in northern Bangladesh.

Hafiz Ahmed, the manager at the Osmani International Airport in Sylhet, said on Friday that flight operations at the airport have been suspended for three days as floodwaters have almost reached the runway.

Last month, a pre-monsoon flash flood, triggered by an onrush of waters from upstream India’s northeastern states, hit Bangladesh’s northern and northeastern regions, destroying crops and damaging homes and road networks.

The country was only recovering from that shock when the monsoon set in only a few days ago. Fresh rains flooded the same regions again.

According to the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, about 17 per cent of people in Bangladesh would need to be relocated over the next decade or so if global warming persists at the present rate.