More than seven million Bangladeshis are still “urgently” in need of shelter and assistance after deadly floods earlier this month, the Red Cross said on Tuesday.
At least 101 people have been killed in the north-east of the country as rivers surged to record levels and flooded rural villages after some of the heaviest rains in a century.
“The scale of the devastation is so much greater this time” than previous floods, said Sanjeev Kafley of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
An estimated 7.2 million people are “in dire need of shelter and emergency assistance” in the worst-hit region of Sylhet, the IFRC said in a statement.
The government has sent food rations and other emergency humanitarian aid to those affected by the floods, said Nitai Dey Sarker of the Bangladesh Disaster Management Agency.
He added that once the flood waters continued to recede, laborers would send corrugated iron as building material for those who had lost their homes.
Sarker said the situation has improved around Bangladesh in recent days, but many in the northeast fear further flooding with two-thirds of the monsoon season ahead.
“We are still stuck in flood defenses and have yet to go home to calculate the damage,” Abdul Hakim, a farmer from Sylhet, told AFP.
“River levels are rising again and this is of great concern,” he added.
The government said nearly 200,000 people took shelter in schools and colleges, which had been closed to accommodate those forced to flee their homes.
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