DHAKA, 17 July 2004 — The death toll from Bangladesh’s worst floods in more than a decade climbed to 72 yesterday, while 60 other people were still missing and feared drowned, officials said.
Thousands of soldiers, paramilitary border guards and civil defense volunteers stood behind river dykes and other flood control structures with sand banks and heavy boulders to stop killer water currents from eroding river banks.
Security forces and civilian rescue workers were kept on a state of high alert after the swirling waters of the Brahmaputra River forced the collapse of a flood control dam washing away at least 60 people in the northern Bogra district.
Fifteen more deaths in flood related incidents were reported from the central Rajbari district where another dam gave into the surging Ganges adding to the overnight death toll of 57 in the latest spell of monsoon flooding.
Dhaka Rejects Allawi’s Request for Troops
Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan yesterday gave an apparent cold shoulder to interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawai’s reported request to Bangladesh and some other countries for troops to Iraq.
“He (Allawi) did not make any request, but expressed his hope for troops and named some countries,” Khan told reporters at Zia International Airport on his return from Vietnam. The Foreign Minister, however, said a request could be made in various ways and forms.
