Floods claim hundreds

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Workers and volunteers frantically stacked sandbags Sunday to protect Bangladesh’s capital from rising water, and a crowded boat ferrying villagers across flood waters capsized in northeastern India, killing at least 10 people.

Five other people were missing after the boat, with more than 50 people on board, overturned and sank in the Morigaon district of Assam, district police chief Rana Bhuyan said.

Villagers and local police rescued three dozen people from the swift-moving flood waters, and 10 bodies had been pulled out, said Moloy Thakur, an official at the nearby state-run Hindustan Paper Corp.

The combined death toll in both countries rose to more than 760 fatalities, with at least 227 deaths in Bangladesh.

Rivers around the capital, Dhaka, burst their banks, leaving 40 percent of the city of 10 million people under water.

Nearly two-thirds of Bangladesh – a delta nation of 140 million people – has been flooded since the start of the monsoon in late June. The floods, the worst since 1998, have affected about 20 million people, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Center said.

Most deaths have been due to drowning, lightning, waterborne diseases and electrocution from snapped power lines.

Hundreds of people from flooded parts of the capital took shelter in schools or offices. Some families pitched makeshift plastic and bamboo tents on sidewalks along busy streets.

Relief workers and volunteers stacked sandbags in a bid to stop water gushing through cracks in two main flood protection embankments to the west and southeast of Dhaka.

Transportation was disrupted, with two major highways and railroads linking the capital to the rest of the country, partially submerged. Many factories producing textiles – Bangladesh’s main export – were closed as water swept into the plants.

Floods are common in Bangladesh, a low-lying deltaic plain crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers that flow from the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal.