DHAKA: Mufazzal Hussain measures the water level in the bedroom of his flooded home less than a kilometre from Dhaka's main business district. "A few more centimetres higher and I will have to move my family to some other place," said the 45-year old taxi driver.

For the past week Hussain, his wife and three children have been battling against the floodwaters from the swollen Buriganga river which has submerged houses in the city's Sabujbagh working class district.

Hussain's family is living on a wooden platform in the bedroom of his ground floor flat surviving on puffed rice, molasses and biscuits. Every day he raises the platform higher as the water level rises.

Hussain's neighbour, who has a double-story house, considers himself lucky. He has been renting out his terrace to his distressed neighbours. The Monsoon floods, feared to be the most devastating in 16 years, crippled the lives and businesses of nearly half of Dhaka's population of 10 million residents.

Boats replaced buses and cars in the waterlogged streets of Dhaka as commuters resorted to rowing canoes in the old quarters of the once bustling capital city. People from 25,000 households in rain swept Dhaka were moved to flood relief shelters set up in public spaces and schools shut down to accommodate the increasing number of stricken families.

More shops and commercial markets were forced to close on Wednesday as water from rivers encircling Dhaka inundated new areas close to the hub of the city. Health officials expressed fears of cholera and typhoid epidemics breaking out because of floodwaters mixing with the city's underground sewer tunnels.

The most vulnerable to the stench are poor families forced to survive by living on boats. Many residents of the posh lakeside diplomatic enclave moved to hotels to avoid the bad odour from the stinking city.

Unconfirmed reports said at least 65 people have died of intestinal diseases this week. Medical workers in the international cholera hospital in Dhaka said they were running out of space as the number of diarrhoea affected people was rising sharply.

Monsoon torrents that have deluged towns and villages in Bangladesh had caused 465 deaths by Wednesday as the country braced for more seasonal rains, according to Selim Bhuiyan of the National Flood Warning and Monitoring Centre.

In 1988 more than half the country remained under water for over two weeks. Official statistics have more than 30 million people in northern and central regions displaced by the heavy downpours and that more than five million others have been forced to evacuate their submerged homes.

Meanwhile, rescue workers were preparing for more monsoon rains as military and civilian volunteers sandbagged a strategic river dam under threat of collapsing near the capital.

The government's Disaster Management Office expected the seasonal floods to deteriorate in the next two or three days as upstream waters were likely to descend to the central and southern parts of the country before falling into the Bay of Bengal.

Flood experts said at least 26 large and small rivers, including the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, were flowing above the red mark. Torrents draining down the Assam hills from across the border in India also forced rivers to burst banks in the worst affected northeastern tea growing Sylhet province. -dpa