In the Borguna district on the southern coast, 77 fishermen on 12 trawlers were unaccounted for after a sudden and heavy downpour, said chief of the local trawler owners association, Golam Mostafa Chowdhury.

He said 92 other fishermen caught in the rain had returned safely or were rescued by late Saturday, but the monsoon and high waves had hampered the search for the rest.

Survivors said they saw seven bodies swept away in the sea, but Chowdhury said he could not immediately confirm any deaths.

In nearby Patuakhali district, eight fishing trawlers were also lost late Saturday with 96 fishermen on board, said officials of the Kalapara Fishing Trawlers Cooperative Society, who feared the missing may not have survived a day on the dangerous sea.

The fishing officials said about 200 trawlers had gone out to the Bay of Bengal from the area, with all but eight able to return safely.

Borguna's police superintendent Fazlur Rahman told AFP authorities were working to verify how many fishermen were dead or missing, noting such incidents were normal during Bangladesh's monsoon.

In a separate incident in the western Bangladesh district of Natore, at least six people died when a small boat carrying 45 picnickers sank late Friday in the drenched wetland, the official BSS news agency reported.

Villagers recovered six bodies and 38 other people managed to swim to safety. One picnicker remained unaccounted for, the agency said.

Weather authorities had warned fishermen of a medium-level storm in the Bay of Bengal late Friday as rain hammered Bangladesh's southern coast and off-shore islands.

But the fishermen apparently ignored the warning as the monsoon is prime catch season.

Authorities asked fishermen to move with caution Sunday as the sea may remain rough before calming down in a day or two.

Trawler accidents are frequent in the turbulent Bay of Bengal. Fifty-three fishermen were reported dead in boat capsizes in the Bay in June.

Calamity-prone Bangladesh, criss-crossed by 230 rivers, has been hard hit since heavy rains began in April, submerging stretches of the country and setting off flash floods.

Some 85 people have been killed in storms around Bangladesh so far this year. And before the rains, another 62 people died in a heatwave.

On July 8, a packed ferry capsized in a monsoon-swelled river in southeastern Bangladesh, killing at least 156 people.

Bangladesh's Relief and Disaster Management Minister Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf called last week for the country to study ways to limit the human and material damage of disasters, saying some 500,000 people have died in natural calamities in the past 40 years.

TERRA.WIRE