Deaths mount despite ebbing floods in Bangladesh

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) - Floods that swept across low-lying Bangladesh for nearly a month are receding fast but flood-related suffering and deaths will not stop anytime soon, officials said on Friday.

They said the confirmed death toll in the floods, which affected districts across more than half the country, rose to 678 by Friday, and was likely to go up as people return to their devastated homes.

The floods have also displaced or made homeless around seven million Bangladeshis, washed away rice and other crops on around 700,000 hectares of land, and destroyed hundreds of kilometres of roads, according to preliminary official estimates.

"Unfortunately, people are still dying in areas where the waters have receded below normal flood levels, but left villages still water-logged," said an official in northern Kurigram district.

Officials blamed the problem mainly on poor drainage caused by indiscriminate construction of roads and highways without adequate sluice gates or water passages.

Most of the flood deaths have been due to drowning, house collapses and snakebites rather than diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases.

The latter, mostly diarrhoea, have infected more than 80,000 Bangladesh flood victims, but only around 20 are known to have died from the illnesses.

A majority of victims have been children, many of whom slipped into the water in their flooded homes at night from makeshift, raised platforms where they and their parents were sleeping, one official said.