Floods in Bangladesh caused devastation on Friday as the country retrieved from weeks of political unrest, killing 13 people and replacing millions more. The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen abrupt floods in Bangladesh in recent decades. The monsoon rains cause widespread harm every year, but climate change amends weather patterns and enhances the frequency of extreme weather events.

According to meteorological experts on Friday, extensive flooding in the country was due to El Nino and climate change, in addition to extreme rains and overflowing rivers. A spokeswoman for the Disaster Management Ministry stated, “We are monitoring the flood situation and relief activities from our control room in Dhaka.”

“It’s a catastrophic situation here,” rescue volunteer Zahed Hossain Bhuiya said from Feni, the hardest-devastated city. “We are trying to rescue as many people as we can.”

Most of Bangladesh comprises deltas where the Himalayan rivers, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra flow into the sea after going through India. Local media reported that all of the major tributaries of the two international rivers were overflowing.

Nur Islam, a shopkeeper in Feni, said that his home had been completely drowned. “Everything is underwater,” the 60-year-old explained.

According to a dispatch from Bangladesh’s disaster management ministry, the latest death toll of 13 was recorded in cities along the country’s southeastern coast. This comprises the critical port city of Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar, which is home to about a million Rohingya refugees from nearby Myanmar.

Areas east of the capital, Dhaka, were also severely impacted, mainly the city of Comilla, which is near the border with Tripura state in India. According to the advisory, nearly 190,000 others were evacuated to emergency assistance shelters, affecting 4.5 million people in total. The ministry said the floods hit 11 of the country’s 64 districts.

According to local media sources, the situation of floods in Bangladesh grew peculiar after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League leadership was deposed in a student-people uprising earlier this month. Local government delegates were either not present or on the run due to their political affiliation, making coordination of relief efforts difficult.

According to disaster management experts, the majority of the deaths were caused by drowning, with electrocution and tree felling also leading to casualties. However, the abrupt deluge of rushing waters from floods in Bangladesh broke many families, forcing many individuals to take shelter on highways or rooftops.

Firefighters, with the help of local citizens, Red Crescent volunteers, police, and army forces, rescued many stranded persons in rubber boats. In one location, a little youngster was spotted standing in chest-deep water, while a young woman was seen resting on a pile of bricks with her infant child on her lap, separated from the rest of their families before being rescued.

Even though many scientists blamed the abrupt floods in Bangladesh on climate change, a 2015 World Bank research showed that 3.5 million people in tropical Bangladesh are vulnerable (to floods) because of its geophysical topography.

Also Read: Almost 500,000 Trees Cut Down For Tesla Germany Gigafactory