Bangladesh Mudslides Claim More Lives

Mudslides, flooding and lightning strikes this week have washed away shanties, inundated cities and killed at least 126 people with about two dozen still missing in Bangladesh's annual monsoons, officials said Wednesday.

The worst-hit area was the hilly port city of Chittagong, where large chunks of earth slid off the soaked hillsides, burying dozens of crudely built shacks. The death toll in the city increased to 115 Wednesday after 18 more bodies were found, city official Nur Sulaiman said.

About two dozen people remained missing, officials said.

Elsewhere, lightning strikes killed 11 people in the neighboring districts of Cox's Bazar, Noakhali and Brahmmanbaria, the Food and Disaster Management Ministry said. The heaviest recorded rainfall levels in seven years also have inundated parts of the capital, Dhaka, and other regions.

On Wednesday, the Gumti River breached an embankment in Comilla district, flooding dozens of villages and forcing several thousand to flee their homes, CSB television station reported. The district is located 55 miles east of the capital.

Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 150 million people, is buffeted by cyclones and floods that kill hundreds each year. A powerful cyclone in 1991 killed 139,000.

Densely populated and grindingly poor, the country is filled with slums that are particularly vulnerable. The one hit in Chittagong was home to 700 people, most of them migrant workers and their families who lived in clusters of straw-and-bamboo or mud-and-tin shanties built on the slope of hill, survivors said.

Life limped back to normal Wednesday in Chittagong, a city of about 4 million, 135 miles southeast of Dhaka, as the rain stopped and the sun reappeared for the first time in three days.

Workers were trying to restore power and water supply that was disrupted because of the rains in the city of 4 million, 135 miles south of Dhaka. Several city roads remained covered in slippery sludge, residents said.

Authorities moved hundreds of people in vulnerable areas to shelters in concrete school buildings, rescue officials said.

Government and charity agencies distributed food and water to about 1,000 people left homeless by the calamity, the area's government administrator Mukhlesur Rahman said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations "stands ready to assist as required," spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Rains also caused havoc in the neighboring Indian city of Calcutta, killing three people, bringing transport to a standstill, clogging roads, submerging railroad tracks and delaying flights.

Three people were killed by lighting at a fish market at Kestopur, a Calcutta suburb on Wednesday, said local police officer, B.D. Manna.

"At some places railway (railroad) tracks are under 6 inches to 12 inches of water forcing us to delay most of the trains," said Samir Goswami, the spokesman for the railways.

A total of 75 long-distance trains operate from two stations in Calcutta, connecting to all major Indian cities. "We will be running the trains, but not sure when," Goswami said.