DHAKA (Reuters) - Landslides triggered by heavy rain in southeast Bangladesh buried dozens of houses and killed at least 46 people on Tuesday, officials said.
The landslides hit villages in the Cox's Bazar hill and resort district, where officials said they recorded 25 cm of rainfall in 24 hours to 9 am on Tuesday.
"The death toll may go up as rescuers are still searching for bodies and people are likely to be still alive under the flattened houses," one senior official told Reuters.
Landslides hit hillside villages in south and northeastern districts almost every year during the monsoon season. At least 130 people died in the worst landslide in the port city of Chittagong in June 2007.
In the last few years, disaster-prone Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated and poorest countries, has seen an increase in intensity and frequency of climate-related problems.
A cyclone in 1991 killed about 140,000 people and another in late 2007 killed over 3,300.
The United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted Bangladesh could lose nearly one-fifth of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming. (Reporting by Nurul Islam and Ruma Paul; Editing by Anis Ahmed and Nick Macfie)
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