DHAKA, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- Troops have been deployed in at least seven northern Bangladesh districts as flood water pouring down hills engulfed almost the entire region.
Officials in Dinajpur district, some 338 km northwest of capital Dhaka, said flood situation in the district deteriorated drastically since early Sunday, with major protection embankments developing massive cracks.
The situation in adjacent Lalmonirhat and Kurigram was also described by officials as critical, with hundreds of thousands of people marooned by on- rushing water.
As flood ravages continued in about one-third of Bangladesh, 14 more people died Monday, raising the death toll to 32 since Sunday, local sources said.
Members of the Bangladesh Army have been mobilized to support the local government to tackle flood, Dinajpur district administration chief Mir Khairul Alam told journalists Monday.
Hundreds of Army troops have already been deployed so far in seven northern Bangladesh districts to repair embankments and conduct rescue operations.
Flood- protection embankments in the districts continued to get battering from rapid flooding waters, rushing downhill in the Indian states, neighboring the north and northwestern bulge of Bangladesh.
Rail links between the region and the rest of Bangladesh snapped Monday when miles of stretch of the railway track running through the region went under water.
Road links also broke down. According to officials at the Flood Warning and Forecasting Center in Dhaka, all the major rivers in the districts and elsewhere in the country continued to rise through Monday.
The collapse of communications systems has hampered emergency relief operations in places of the flood-hit areas.
Floods have so far reportedly hit 20 districts, mostly in the country's north.
The country's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said more areas are likely to be inundated as water continued to rise amid monsoon rains and onrush of water from the upstream.
Sazzad Hossain of the flood forecasting agency said rising water-level was recorded at 69 out of the 90 monitoring points of the rivers across the country Monday.
According to flood forecasting agency, the entire flood situation will aggravate over the next few days as the water-level on the the major Jamuna River was at a record 126 cm above the danger level on Monday, breaking the previous record of 121 cm last year.
Bangladesh's Disaster Management and Relief Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya Monday said some 600,000 people across Bangladesh have been affected by the flash floods, with about 368,586 people taking refuge in shelters.
He said the government is well prepared to face any situation and ease people's suffering with adequate food stock.
