Although many areas are still under water following the worst flooding in years, villagers have begun to leave their temporary shelters, relief workers said.

"People are very keen to to go back to their homes although there is still a lot of work to be done because when they get there they are likely to discover to their horror that major work needs to be done, the sort of things that cannot be done by families alone," said Naseem Ur Rehman, of the United Nations Children's Fund.

Many flimsy homes built with bamboo and corrugated iron have been washed away entirely while others have been half buried in sand and mud from breached earth embankments, relief workers said.

The most unfortunate, victims of river erosion, would discover that land their homes stood on had been eaten up by rivers leaving them permanently homeless.

Assistance would be required to help people mend handpumps contaminated with flood water, rebuild homes and plant new crops, relief workers added.

The World Food Programme said it was working with non-governmental organisations to get food aid to some of the more remote areas.

"When people go back they will find that there is nothing there: no infrastructure, no crops, no food, so we will need to provide aid for some time," said Emamul Haque, head of advocacy at the World Food Programme.

The flooding, which hit on July 10, has killed 694 people according to the official news agency BSS and left thousands suffering from diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases.

At the height of the flooding, two-thirds of the country was submerged.

The Bangladesh government is working with aid agencies and non-governmental organisations to distribute relief although they have struggled to reach those in far-flung districts.

United Nations and other aid agencies have said that vast quantities of crops have been destroyed and that 20 million of the 33 million affected by the floods are in urgent need of food.

TERRA.WIRE