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'I've never seen so much water'
12/06/2007 10:35 - (SA)
Chittagong, Bangladesh - The number of people killed in storms and heavy monsoon rains that triggered landslides in southeastern Bangladesh has risen to 101, an official said on Tuesday.
The death toll climbed after emergency teams pulled 15 bodies from homes that had been buried under the mud in the port city of Chittagong.
"Rescue work is still going on with more than 1 000 troops, police and fire brigade officers joining the operation, said Major Moeen, who uses one name, of the army's incident control room.
"I am afraid the toll may climb further," he added.
Torrential rains hammered southeastern Bangladesh early on Tuesday, flooding afresh parts of Chittagong, the weather bureau and witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of new mudslides, the bureau said.
The worst-hit area on Monday was a congested shantytown in Chittagong, where large chunks of hill collapsed and buried dozens of bamboo and straw shacks. Army rescuers pulled out at least 35 bodies from the debris, said Shahidul Islam, a city official.
Rescue operations resumed on Tuesday, while authorities moved hundreds of people in vulnerable areas to shelters in concrete school buildings, the city official said.
Many residents said the rainfall and flooding were among the worst in memory.
"I have never seen so much water in my life," said Mofizur Rahman, 75, who has lived near the city's main hospital, Chittagong Medical College Hospital, for 45 years.
The downtown area was submerged under 1.2m of water, he said.
Highest recorded levels in seven years
Nasir Ahmed, a fire brigade officer, said rescuers retrieved 15 bodies from the remnants of a slum on land belonging to Bangladesh Railways. Six others died in another hillside slum near a power station, he said, and five members of a family perished when the walls of their brick home collapsed in heavy rain on the Chittagong University campus.
Four others, including a young mother and her toddler, were killed when their house collapsed. A policeman was electrocuted when he stepped on a severed electrical wire.
Emergency workers managed to rescue more than 50 injured people from the rubble.
Flash floods and inundated roads were hampering rescue efforts in the city of four million, 220km southeast of the capital, Dhaka.
Several factories in an industrial belt around the city were also flooded, stopping production and causing extensive damage to machinery, said MA Mohiuddin, whose textile mill makes goods for export.
The city's telephone, television and radio networks were also interrupted as transmission stations were flooded.
Government and charity agencies distributed food and water to about 1 000 people left homeless by the calamity, the area's government administrator Mukhlesur Rahman said.
Heavy monsoon rains - the highest recorded levels in seven years - also inundated parts of the capital Dhaka and other regions of the country over the weekend.
Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 144 million people, is buffeted by cyclones and floods that kill hundreds of people every year.
A powerful cyclone in 1991 killed 139 000 people along the coast.
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