Flood deluge worsens in Bangladesh with millions affected

The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades.

The annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.

"It's a catastrophic situation here," rescue volunteer Zahed Hossain Bhuiya, 35, told AFP from the worst-hit city of Feni. "We are trying to rescue as many people as we can."

Much of Bangladesh is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, wind towards the sea after coursing through India.

All the major tributaries of the two transnational rivers were overflowing, according to local media reports.