DHAKA — Military personnel have been deployed for rescue and relief operations in Bangladesh after monsoon rains swamped huge areas of the country.
At least 41 people have died and millions have been left stranded.
Officials have said much of the northeast is under water and that the situation could worsen over the weekend with more rains forecast.
The Sylhet region is among the worst affected, with much of the area without electricity and Internet access.
Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.
Relentless downpours over the past week have inundated vast stretches of Bangladesh's northeast, with troops deployed to evacuate households cut off from neighboring communities.
Schools have been turned into relief shelters to house entire villages inundated in a matter of hours by rivers that suddenly burst their banks. "The whole village went under water by early Friday and we all got stranded," said Lokman, whose family lives in Companiganj village.
At least 16 people have been killed since Thursday in India's remote Meghalaya, the state's chief minister Conrad Sangma wrote on Twitter, after landslides and surging rivers that submerged roads.
Next door in Assam state, more than 1.8 million people have been affected by floods after five days of incessant downpours.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters he had instructed district officials to provide "all necessary help and relief" to those caught in the flooding.
Flooding in Bangladesh worsened on Saturday morning after a temporary reprieve from the rains the previous afternoon, Sylhet region chief government administrator Mosharraf Hossain told AFP.
"The situation is bad. More than four million people have been stranded by flood water," Hossain said, adding that nearly the entire region was without electricity. The flooding forced Bangladesh's third-largest international airport in Sylhet to shut down on Friday. — Agencies
