DHAKA (Bangladesh) - AT LEAST 20,000 people in northern Bangladesh have been cut off from the rest of the country after several rivers burst their banks, news reports said on Sunday as a flood warning agency forecast the situation is 'likely to deteriorate'.

Crops on some 10,000 hectares of land were under water in the northern districts of Lalmonirhat, Rangpur, Kurigram, Nilphamari and Gaibandha, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported.

The Daily Star newspaper reported at least 60,000 day labourers lost their jobs because of the flooding.

Meanwhile, the official Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said the 'overall flood situation of the country is alarming' as water levels of all three major rivers - Jamuna, Padma and Meghna - were rising simultaneously.

Mokhlesur Rahman, an official with the control room of the Disaster Ministry, said officials were trying to collect details from the flooded zones.

The forecasting centre said more low-lying areas in both northern and central Bangladesh are likely to be submerged within two to three days while northeastern districts bordering India are under threat.

Flooding during monsoon season comes almost every year in various regions of low-lying Bangladesh, a delta nation of 150 million people, leaving thousands homeless and destroying crops.

Survivors
Villagers in northeast India who fled their homes after a river shifted course causing huge floods said on Sunday the rescue operation was failing and those left behind had been abandoned.

At a makeshift relief camp in the state of Bihar, flood survivors pleaded with officials to send help to relatives they believe are marooned on rooftops or on the few areas of higher ground still above water.

'I left my village 12 days ago when the waters first started to rise. I went out to find food for the cattle and ended up at this camp,' said Shivnath Yadav, 70, as tears welled in his eyes.

'I haven't seen my family since. I want to get them out but no boats are going there. I don't know what they are eating, or what they are drinking. We need the rescue operation to find our families now. But there are not enough boats.'

Shrawan Baitha, 28, last spoke to his wife by cellphone on Saturday, when she told him she was stuck with other family members on their roof in Ratanpatti village, just a few kilometres from the relief camp here.

She told him that his pregnant niece was experiencing labour pains, but he has been unable to get through to her since.

'They said the water had completely surrounded them,' said Mr Baitha, who said he has run from one local official to another begging for boats to be sent there before it is too late.

'Not one person from Ratanpatti has made it to this camp,? he said.

Mr Baitha said 14,000 people live in his village, and he prayed many had escaped soon after the floods began when the monsoon-swollen Kosi river first breached its banks on the Nepal border on Aug 18.

More than 400,000 people have been evacuated in an operation involving local authorities, emergency workers and the army, disaster management official Pratyaya Amrit told AFP on Sunday.

Another 800,000 people have made their own way out and sought shelter in overcrowded relief centres set up by the government or in concrete buildings and temples, officials in impoverished Bihar state said.

About 75 people have died, they said, adding millions had been affected by the floods and warning that the death toll could climb as many areas were inaccessible. -- AFP, AP