Zia held talks with several senior ministers at her office to review the situation and make sure the government had enough aid including food, the ATN Bangla television channel reported.

Seven more districts have been hit by floods rolling down from the country's north and northwestern areas into low-lying areas, officials said.

The mass-circulation Daily Ittefaq reported Sunday that five more people, four of them children, drowned Saturday in three flood-hit areas.

The unofficial death toll since monsoon rains started hammering deltaic Bangladesh in May now stands at 60, with most killed in landslides in the southeastern hill tracts last week.

Newspapers, including the mass-circulation Janakantha daily, said 14 of Bangladesh's 64 districts were flooded with tens of thousands of people either marooned or being forced to move to safer places.

Schools have been closed in some areas and some have been turned into shelters for people made homeless by the flooding, officials said.

Witnesses said areas around the capital Dhaka were also flooded as gushing waters pushed up the levels of the Shitalakhya, Balu and Buriganga rivers.

And experts warned that the situation could worsen as monsoon rains are expected to become even heavier later this month.

A government meteorologist said the country saw 50 percent more rainfall than usual in June this year.

He forecast that in July there would be at least 20 percent more rain than average and predicted at least two areas of low pressure over the Bay of Bengal, which would again cause floods in some parts of the country.

Officials in the disaster ministry's control room, however, said the situation was normal and expected nothing serious in the coming weeks.

"The situation upstream has been improving since late Saturday, but as the water flows down to the Bay of Bengal new areas are being flooded," a Flood Warning Centre official told AFP.

He added that latest reports showed that out of 85 monitoring stations, 33 points recorded a rise, 33 points recorded a fall, two stations remained unchanged and 11 points were flowing above what is considered the danger-mark.

Bangladesh's four-month full monsoon starts this month when the average monthly rainfall varies from 1,194 to 3,454 millimetres (48 to 138 inches).

In 1988, three months of sustained flooding left several hundred people dead and caused millions of dollars in damage, prompting a global call to help Bangladesh develop a long-term flood-protection system.

But in 1998 Bangladesh was again ravaged by the worst flood in a century, leaving millions homeless and causing massive damage.

In neighbouring India, floods have also displaced nearly a million people and killed 13, mainly in the northeast neighbouring Bangladesh.

TERRA.WIRE