Some 21 dead were counted in Cox’s Bazar, 19 in Chittagong, 10 in Bandarban and 5 in Rangamati, according to officials in the areas most affected by the bad weather. “This is some of the heaviest rainfall in recent years,” said head of Bangladesh’s meteorology department, Azizur Rahman, adding that 312 millimeters of rain was recorded on Aug. 7 alone.
“In Cox’s Bazar, about 600,000 people have been affected by the rains,” district administrator Shaheen Ibrahim, which hosts a million Rohingya refugees who fled the crackdown in Burma, told AFP.
2,000 people displaced to safe places
Refugee Commissioner Mizanur Rahman said four Rohingyas were among the victims, including a child and his mother who were buried in a landslide. “We have moved about 2,000 people to safe places,” said Mizanur Rahman.
Hundreds of villages were submerged in Chittagong, the country’s second city with the largest port. “The rain damaged at least 5,000 houses with thatched roofs,” local administrator Abul Bashar Mohammed Fakhruzzaman said.
Transport was halted for a few days between Chittagong and Cox’s Bar and railway tracks were damaged, he said. In the Chittagong region, five people are missing, local government official Shahina Sultana said.
“The government is doing everything possible to help the population”
She also assured that “the government is doing everything possible to help the population”, stating that the country’s authorities have sent food and aid to this region which is the most affected. The summer monsoon brings South Asia about 80% of its annual rainfall. It causes death and destruction caused by floods and landslides.
Extreme weather events (cyclones, heat waves, floods, droughts, etc.) are natural phenomena. But global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activities is increasing their magnitude and/or frequency, experts say.