Bangladesh flood death toll crosses 1,000

DHAKA: The death toll from flooding this year in impoverished Bangladesh crossed 1,000 on Saturday with a further 2.5 million people displaced or marooned by rising river waters, officials said.

The Brahmaputra and the Ganges began swelling again early this week, bursting their banks and submerging thousands of villages again in more than a third of the country, the government flood centre said.

The government’s health department said in the last two days 23 people have died in the low-lying nation, mostly drowning in swirling flood water, taking this year’s monsoon death toll to 1,023. More than 2.5 million people have been marooned or displaced by the new flooding, while crops across two million acres (800,000 hectares) of land have been completely or partially damaged, the centre said.

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