Xinhua News Agency Getty Images Army troops have been called in to rescue thousands trapped by massive floods that have ravaged northeastern India and Bangladesh, leaving millions of homes under water and disrupting transport links, authorities said on Saturday. In the Indian state of Assam, at least nine people have been killed in floods and 2 million have seen their homes sink, according to the state disaster management agency. Lightning strikes in neighboring Bangladesh have killed at least nine people since Friday. Both countries have called for help from their armies as more flooding approaches with heavy rains expected to continue over the weekend. In Sylhet in northeastern Bangladesh, on the banks of the Surma River, children were sitting in a window of a flooded house while other family members gathered in a bed inside their flooded home, some wondering how to overcome the ordeal. “How can we eat (in this situation)? said Anjuman Ara Begum, who was standing in the water in her kitchen. “We live with muri (puffed rice) and chira (flat rice) and other things that people give. What else can we do? We can not cook.” Flights at Osmani International Airport in Sylhet were suspended for three days as floodwaters almost reached the runway, according to Hafiz Ahmed, the airport’s director. The Sylhet Sunamganj motorway also flooded, but motorcycles were moving. Water levels on all major rivers across the country have risen, according to the capital, Dhaka, flood forecast and warning center. The country has about 130 rivers. The epicenter was reported below the Pacific Ocean floor, however; no tsunami alert was issued. The Brahmaputra, one of Asia’s largest rivers, breached its mud embankments, flooding 3,000 villages and crops in 28 of Assam’s 33 cross-border areas in India. “We expect moderate to heavy rainfall in several parts of Assam by Sunday. The amount of rainfall was unprecedented,” said Sanjay O’Neill, a meteorological official at Gawhati, the capital of Assam. Several train services have been canceled in India amid uninterrupted rainfall over the past five days. In the town of Haflong in southern Assam, the train station was underwater and flooded rivers deposited mud and mud along the railway tracks. The Indian Army has mobilized to assist disaster relief services in rescuing trapped people and providing food and other basic necessities. Soldiers used speedboats and inflatable rafts to navigate sunken areas. Last month, a sudden pre-monsoon flood, triggered by a torrent of water upstream in India’s northeastern states, hit northern and northeastern Bangladesh, destroying crops and destroying homes and roads. The country was just beginning to recover when fresh rains flooded the same areas again this week. Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people, is at a low ebb and faces the threat of natural disasters, such as floods and cyclones, exacerbated by climate change. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, about 17% of people in Bangladesh will need to relocate over the next decade or so if global warming continues at its current rate.
