Share & more
Over 600,000 river island residents have been marooned and thousands of hectares of crops destroyed due to heavy monsoon flooding in Bangladesh. Heavy monsoon rains throughout the Himalayan region tend to cause rivers flowing southwards into low-lying Bangladesh to overflow.
“The flood situation is not improving. However, we are doing everything we can to assist those affected,” Minister of Food and Disaster Management Muhammad Abdur Razzaque told IRIN on 13 July.
The `chars’ or river islands - prone to acute erosion and flooding and a by-product of the rivers’ hydro-morphological dynamics - periodically submerge during the country’s annual monsoon flood season, which runs from the second week of June to mid-August.
According to local authorities, access to those affected on or along the Brahmaputra river - the main river that divides the country into east and west before emptying into the Bay of Bengal - remains problematic.
ao/ds/cb
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
