Water Development Board employees work to protect an embankment at Malshapara in Sirajganj on Sunday as flood water washed away a 70m stretch of the town protection embankment.— New Age photo

Flooding in the north continued to worsen but flood water in other parts of the country started receding.
Several flood protection embankments collapsed inundating more than a hundred villages in the north as the Jamuna-Brahmaputra river system was still swelling while other rivers started to fall.
New Age correspondents in northern districts reported that the Jamuna and the Brahmaputra were swelling although the Dharla in the north started declining on Sunday. The Surma and the Kushiyara in the north-east continued to rise.
But several hundred people in Kurigram, Bogra and Sirajganj were stranded as several embankments had collapsed. The affected people were living in miseries for shortage of relief materials.
The correspondent in Kurigram said that although the heights of some rivers started declining, most of the 16 rivers were swelling, worsening the flooding in the district. Some three lakh people became marooned.
The Water Development Board control room in Kurigram said that the Brahmaputra was flowing 43cm above danger mark at the Chilmari point and the Dharla was flowing 5cm above danger mark at the bridge point although the water level of the Dharla declined by about 20cm in the past 24 hours.
About 20 villages of Roumari were inundated afresh as a 60ft stretch of the embankment at the Chatkoraibari point at Danthanga breached early Sunday, the upazila project implementation officer, Shakhawat Hossain, said.
Another embankment stretch at Najishwari in the district breached, inundating about 30 villages.
The deputy commissioner’s office control room said that about three lakh people of 1,24,180 families had been marooned. Crops on some 20,000 acres were damaged.
The flood destroyed 19,812 houses and damaged 58,035 houses, destroyed 253 kilometres of road stretch and damaged 126 kilometres of road stretch. Four hundred educational institutions, 3,438k stretch of embankments and several bridges and culverts were also damaged.
Road communications on different routes remained suspended.
The correspondent in Bogra said that about 15 villages had gone under flood water on Sunday as the
Koiagari embankment of the Jamuna at Dhunat had breached.
Flooding worsened in Bogra as the Jamuna was flowing 90cm above danger mark.
The affected people took shelter in the safe places and many of them lived under the open sky.
The fresh areas that were flooded are Raghunathpur, Baniajan, Koiagari, Baraitali, Bhandarbari, Bhootbari, Gopalnagar, Marichtala, Ramkrishnapur, Madhabdanga, Narayanpur, Chithulia, Manik Patal, Boga and Khokshabari.
The correspondent in Sirajganj said that flooding in the district had deteriorated with inundation of new areas in about 70 villages.
A portion of a newly constructed embankment of the Water Development Board at Malshapara and a long stretch of the Shimla solid spur of the Brahmaputra flood protection embankment breached.
Water Development Board officials said that the increasing water
level of the Jamuna had put the Sirajganj town
protection embankment at risk.
The correspondent in Sylhet reported that flooding in district had improved slightly with the water of the main rivers and their tributaries receding.
Water levels of the main rivers — the Surma and the Kushiyara — declined by 13cm to 71cm at different points in the past 24 hours, the Water Development Board said.
The Surma, however, was following 37cm above danger mark at Kanaighat, 21cm above at the Sylhet city and 13cm above at Sunamganj and the Kushiyara 24cm above and 26cm above at Amalsid and Shewla at 3:00pm, the agency said.