Chittagong

River waters in low-lying Bangladesh are receding after days of deadly floods but 300,000 people are still in emergency shelters requiring aid, disaster officials said on Sunday.

The heavy floods, which killed at least 18 people in Bangladesh, have added to the challenges of a new government that took charge this month after a student-led revolution.

Monsoon storms in Bangladesh have killed at least 25 people and unleashed devastating floods that left more than four million others stranded, officials said on June 18. 

At least 34 people have died after a fire that sparked a huge chemical explosion and was still blazing on Sunday at a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, officials said.

The toll was expected to rise with over 300 people injured, some of them seriously, and eyewitnesses said they had seen unrecovered bodies in the facility near the major southern port of Chittagong.

Significant development projects are in pipeline in Bangladesh's main port city Chittagong that "may attract investment from Turkey," an official statement said on Jan. 13.

Turkey's state-run aid agency on June 7 delivered medical supplies to Bangladesh in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

"TİKA [Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency] provided one thousand N95 masks, one thousand PPE suits, two ventilators and five thousand medical masks to support Bangladesh in fighting COVID-19," the Turkish Embassy in Dhaka said in a statement.

Heavy monsoon rains have killed at least 46 people in southeast Bangladesh, most of them buried under landslides, authorities said on June 13.

Police warned that the death toll would likely rise as emergency workers reached remote parts of the affected area, where telephone and transport links had been cut.

Cyclone Mora hit Bangladesh yesterday, packing winds of up to 135 kilometers per hour, damaging thousands of homes as more than 300,000 people fled coastal villages.

The severe storm made landfall on the coast between Cox's Bazar and the main port city of Chittagong at 6:00 am local time, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) said.

Cyclone Mora hit Bangladesh Tuesday packing winds of up to 117 kilometres per hour (73mph) after authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people from low-lying coastal villages, reported AFP.

An overloaded fishing boat carrying migrants to Malaysia sank in strong currents off the coast of Bangladesh on Jan 29 and 24 passengers are missing, police said.

Emergency workers rescued 32 Bangladeshis in the Bay of Bengal after the boat capsized some 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) offshore, but others are still unaccounted for, police said.

Turkish Petroleum International Company is to supply Bangladesh with 60,000 tons of gasoil in 2015 for the first time to meet the growing demand for fuel in the country, the chairman of the state Bangladesh Petroleum Corp (BPC) said Dec. 7.

Last month, BPC concluded negotiations on imports of oil products during the first half of 2015 with 10 companies, including Turkish Petroleum.