Six individuals have perished due to floods caused by heavy rainfall in northeast India and neighboring Bangladesh, affecting over a million residents, officials reported on Wednesday.
Monsoons annually lead to extensive damage, but experts note that climate change is altering weather patterns and intensifying extreme weather events. In the northeastern Indian state of Assam, disaster authorities confirmed four fatalities in the past day, raising the death toll since mid-May to 38. In Bangladesh, two people, including a Rohingya refugee, were killed by landslides due to heavy monsoon rain, according to police commander Jahirul Hoque Bhuiyan.
Bangladeshi authorities have moved some residents in relief camps, housing around a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, to safer locations. The most severe flooding occurred in the northeastern Sylhet division, where government official Abu Ahmed Siddique reported that over 1.3 million people were impacted.
Secretary of Bangladesh's disaster management ministry, Kamrul Hasan, stated that rivers had overflowed after rainfall in upstream India. Much of low-lying Bangladesh consists of deltas formed by the Himalayan rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra. Hasan also mentioned that numerous relief shelters had been established in Sylhet for those displaced by the floods.
India's weather department has warned of potential further flash floods in Assam and adjacent states. The floods have damaged roads in the state, and the air force rescued 13 stranded fishermen on an island. A significant part of the Kaziranga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its one-horned rhinos, has also been flooded.
The summer monsoon provides South Asia with 70-80% of its annual rainfall, often resulting in flooding and landslides. The rainfall is challenging to predict and varies, but scientists believe climate change is making the monsoon more intense and unpredictable. Recent incidents include 14 deaths in Nepal due to landslides, lightning, and flooding, and nine fatalities in a Bangladesh landslide in June.
