DHAKA
(Reuters) - At least 21 people were killed and more than 100 were
injured in a series of storms that lashed parts of Bangladesh at
the weekend, officials said on Monday.
The tropical
storms -- which packed winds of up to 80 km (50 miles) per hour
-- also damaged homes and rice paddy crops.
``The deaths
were caused by a ferry sinking and houses collapsing, which also
left over 100 injured and many missing,''
an official
at the Disaster Management Bureau in Dhaka told Reuters.
He said seven
people drowned when a ferry sank on Saturday night in the Meghna
river estuary, upstream from the island of Hatiya in the Bay of
Bengal.
``Seven bodies
were pulled out of the river Meghna, but some 50 passengers of
the ill-fated ferry were still reported missing,'' said Mohammad
Nur Alam, a police officer in the southern town of Lakshmipur.
An official
in Sirajgang, northwest of Dhaka, said 12 people were killed and
about 50 injured by falling trees and collapsing bamboo-walled
houses with tin roofs.
In the neighboring
district of Pabna, Deputy Commissioner Syed Hasinur Rahman said
that over 100 houses and many acres of standing crops had been
damaged.
Two people
were also killed by lightning in the northeastern town of Sylhet,
and at least 50 people were injured as a storm leveled at least
100 homes and scores of trees on Sunday, police said.
Samarendra
Karmakar, deputy director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Office,
told Reuters that tropical storms were likely to hit many places
of the country over the next month.
``Tropical
storms often hit when rising atmospheric temperature is blended
with moisture from the Bay of Bengal,'' he said, adding that such
pre-monsoon storms develop quickly, giving the authorities little
chance to warn civilians.
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