DHAKA, 27 July 2004 — Floodwaters, disease and snakebites killed 58 more people across Bangladesh as two-third’s of the country and much of the capital was under water, officials said yesterday, as the death toll from monsoon flooding across all of South Asia neared 950.

The new deaths in Bangladesh came as rivers around the capital Dhaka burst their banks, leaving 40 percent of the city of 10 million people under water. Parts of the central business district and two upscale residential areas were submerged.

Workers and volunteers frantically stacked sandbags in a bid to stop water gushing through cracks in two main flood protection embankments outside the capital.

The floods - the worst in this delta nation of 140 million people since 1998 - have hit 45 of the country’s 64 districts since the start of the monsoon in late June.

Government relief workers and volunteers are distributing food, medicines and clothes to people stranded in their homes or sheltering on mud embankments, raised highways, school buildings or mosques.

But many complained that not enough relief was getting through.

“There is no pure water here. The water in the street is dirty,” said local resident Amena Begum, who was sheltering in a school. “In the past three days I’ve been here, I’ve got only a few packets of biscuits.”

Dhaka Mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka toured some relief centers yesterday and told The Associated Press, “the flood victims are suffering a lot. We are trying our best to mitigate their sufferings.”

Thousands of people in Dhaka took boats to work yesterday after floods inundated large parts of the Bangladeshi capital, forcing up to 100,000 people to cram into shelters.

Many streets in the city of 10 million people were waist-deep in water as the country’s most severe floods in 15 years worsened. About one-third of Dhaka was under water and boats replaced rickshaws as primary transport.

“I am virtually starving for three days, with my children, as my husband has found no work,” said Maleka Begum, the wife of a rickshaw puller in Dhaka’s Bashabo area.

Workers and volunteers struggled to plug small breaches on a giant dike, called the DND embankment, and piled sandbags to block floodwater threatening to overflow it, witnesses said.