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Bangladesh flood crisis worsens, more rains predicted

New Delhi/Dhaka (dpa) - The flood crisis in Bangladesh claimed at least 100 additional lives within the last 24 hours, officials in the country said Wednesday, as international aid agencies appealed for urgent help for the region.
The official death toll of the disaster has now reached 465, according to the government, while unofficial sources estimated that at least 1,000 people have lost their lives since the worst Monsoon floods in 16 years hit Bangladesh, eastern India and Nepal.

In total 30 million people in Bangladesh had to leave their homes as a result of the floods. In total more than 40 million people -most of them women and children - were effected by the crisis, international aid agencies said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the country was bracing itself for even bigger problems as the Bangladesh's National Flood Warning and Monitoring Centre forecast that water levels in many of the 26 flooded rivers would rise even further by the weekend.

Health officials in Bangladesh's 10-million-strong capital Dhaka said they feared epidemics of cholera and typhoid as floodwaters were mixing with the city's underground sewer tunnels.

More than 25,000 households have been evacuated in the city. Among those most vulnerable to the sewer-filled water were poor families living on boats.

Unconfirmed reports said that at least 65 people have already died of intestinal diseases related to the sanitary conditions, and doctors in the capital's international cholera hospital warned they were running out of space to treat the number of diarrhoea patients.

In the Assam region in Eastern India, the situation was also getting worse. Rudolph Schwenk, German director of the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF said the floods were the worst ever to have been recorded in the area.

"Large parts of Assam look like one huge lake,'' said Schwenk, adding that many people had taken refuge on their houses, waiting for provision to be delivered by air.

In total 3.7 million fresh water tablet as well as one million packages of mineral solution against dehydration and dysentery were to be delivered to the area within the next few days.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Societies (IFRC) said Wednesday in Geneva that more than 7 million euro were needed to provide 1.5 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal with food, shelter, water and clothes.

The IFRC also warned that about 1 million people in Bangladesh will need aid to survive in the next six months, following the on-going flood crisis in the country.

Thousands of hectares of agricultural land had been destroyed in the north, northeast and centre region of Bangladesh, the organization said.

Meanwhile, the European Commission announced Wednesday in Brussels that it would give 4.35 million euros in aid to the victims of the floods, in response to recent aid appeals by the IFRC.

Officials said 4 million euros had been earmarked for a range of activities - including food aid, medicines and the supply of oral rehydration salts - in Bangladesh and the northern Indian states of Assam and Bihar.

The remaining amount would be channelled to the Tajikistan capital, Dushanbe, where torrential rains have also left a trail of destruction, they said.

The funds were due to be channelled to both regions through the E.U.'s humanitarian aid office - ECHO.

dpa si jm af emc

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