The death toll was earlier put at 57 but BSS said officials had confirmed 185 deaths and that unofficial reports indicated the true number could be "much higher".

It said the number of people affected had risen from 11 million to more than 19 million out of a total population of 140 million.

The flooding, the most serious since Bangladesh's worst ever floods of 1998, has now also inundated parts of north, northeast and southeast Dhaka, forcing some residents to wade through waist high water.

"My house has three feet (90 centimetres) of water in it so we sitting on chairs on top of tables and sleeping on bamboo platforms," Ram Das, a resident of the flooded Basabo area, two kilometres (1.2 miles) east of downtown Dhaka, told AFP.

At a boat market in the city, middlemen were doing brisk business in rowing boats which were selling for 4,000 taka (66 US dollars), more than double their normal price, a report in the New Age daily said.

Slum dwellers living on the edge of Dhaka lakes appeared to be the worst affected and were Friday building new homes from bamboo and plastic sheeting on nearby pavements, an AFP correspondent saw.

Areas adjacent to Dhaka's Zia International Airport were also flooded but BSS said the airport was not yet in danger.

"The runway is still two feet above the level of the rain-fed canals around the airport," said a civil aviation official quoted by BSS.

Meanwhile, the Flood Warning Centre predicted there would be no change in the flood situation in the central Bangladesh around the capital, or the north and northwest of the country, although some rivers in the worst-hit northeast had recorded a fall in levels, BSS said.

The situation, however, had improved at northeastern Sylhet airport where flights, suspended after runways were flooded, were due to resume Friday, BSS added.

Bangladesh, a low-lying country criss-crossed by 230 rivers including major arteries carrying melting snow from the Himalayas, suffers annual flooding affecting at least 20 per cent of the country.

The worst ever floods of 1998 saw two-thirds of the country inundated and left 21 million people homeless and more than 700 dead.

The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) has warned the situation in Bangladesh could become critical if there were further heavy rains.

It said it planned to launch an international appeal Monday to raise 3.2 million dollars for victims of the flooding.

TERRA.WIRE