Nearly 7,000 cases of water-borne diseases had been reported since Friday alone, while the official death toll from the floods rose to 489, the officials told the official BSS news agency.

Although river levels were falling, water was receding at a slow rate and nearly 5,000 shelters across the country were still crowded with homeless flood victims, the agency said.

It said the flooding since July 10 had inundated 40 of the country's 64 districts, including two-thirds of the capital Dhaka, and affected some 30 million people. The cost of the damage to property and infrastructure was put at 6.6 billion dollars, it said.

The flooding is the heaviest since 1998 when the country's worst ever floods claimed the lives of more than 700 people.

The government is working with international aid agencies to distribute emergency relief and coordinate post-flood rehabilitation programmes.

TERRA.WIRE