Intense flooding and mudslides have washed away a shantytown crowded with migrant workers in southeastern Bangladesh, killing 105 people and leaving scores unaccounted for.

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. Army rescuers pulled at least 21 bodies from the debris today and two from a pond, according to Nur Sulaiman, a local government official.

In addition more than 50 more people were reported missing in the shantytown, which is located near a military area.

The slum’s estimated 700 residents were mostly migrant workers and their families, who lived in clusters of straw-and-bamboo or mud-and-tin shanties built along the slopes or at the bottom of the dirt hills, survivors said.

One survivor told how he had lost five family members, including his wife and two small sons.

“There was a sudden rush of mud and water, and our home was swept away,” said Dulu Mia Munshi, a rickshaw puller who moved to Chittagong from the coastal district of Bhola in search of work almost 18 years ago.

Mr Munshi and his mother-in-law, who had left their hut minutes before, were the only survivors as five other nearby shanties on a slope were also washed away, with their 22 inhabitants. Mr Munshi was carried several feet away, and suffered sprained ankles and a fractured waist.

“My sons, aged 8 and 10, slept next to each other,” told The Associated Press news agency by phone from his hospital bed.

Another victim, an 11-year-old-boy who gave his name as Belal, lost his mother and two sisters.

“My mother asked me get some bricks to stop the rushing water from getting inside our house,” Belal told reporters at a military hospital where he was being treated for head and limb injuries. “As soon as I stepped outside, I was carried away by the swirling water, and a huge chunk of earth buried our house.”

The country’s interim leader, Fakhruddin Ahmed, visited the worst-hit areas today, the United News of Bangladesh news agency said. He went to a military hospital where 47 seriously injured victims were being treated, and distributed emergency rations among survivors at an army-run relief shelter nearby.

About 22 cm (8.4 ins) of rain fell in just three hours yesterday morning, the local weather bureau said. The rains eased late yesterday but resumed in torrents early today, flooding afresh parts of Chittagong.

At least 67 died across the city yesterday, while another four bodies were found overnight. Lightning strikes killed 11 people in the districts of Cox’s Bazar, Noakhali and Brahmmanbaria, the Food and Disaster Management Ministry said. Emergency workers managed to rescue more than 50 injured people from the rubble.

Authorities moved hundreds of people in vulnerable areas to shelters in concrete school buildings.

Today several city roads remained covered in slippery sludge, and the ground floors of many houses were water-logged, residents 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.

Many areas remained without power or water as supply stations were flooded in the city of 4 million people, which lies 220 km (135 miles) southeast of the capital, Dhaka.

Many of the dead were buried in rows by city officials, in hillside graveyards that were left dry.

Geoff Hoon, a Foreign Office minister, today sent his condolences to Bangladesh over the disaster.

Many residents said the rainfall and flooding were among the worst in memory. Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 144 million people, is buffeted by cyclones and floods that kill hundreds of people every year. A powerful cyclone in 1991 killed 139,000 people along the coast.

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