Dhaka, Oct 5 : Nearly 300 people, mostly rural farmers, have been killed in lightning strikes in Bangladesh this year.

A total of 297 people, including 242 men and 55 women, died due to lightning strikes during the period from February to September this year, Xinhua news agency reported.

Save the Society and Thunderstorm Awareness Forum (SSTF), a local organisation, published the death toll at a press conference in Dhaka on Saturday.

The SSTF, which has been monitoring casualties from thunderstorms since 2019, said 73 people were injured during this period.

The majority of lightning fatalities occurred in rural areas where people were working on their farmlands, it said.

SSTF said the figures for lightning casualties were collected from national dailies, local daily newspapers, online news portals, and television channels.

More than 96 deaths were reported in May, along with 77 in June, 19 in July, 17 in August and 47 in September.

Deaths due to lightning strikes are common in Bangladesh in the months when the weather changes from the dry season to the rainy summer season.

But the South Asian country has seen a surge in deaths due to lightning strikes over recent years, and some of the country's experts have blamed the situation directly on climate change.

The number of deaths caused by lightning strikes has been rising in recent years in Bangladesh, fueled by climate change. The country records an average of 300 deaths by lightning strikes every year compared to fewer than 20 annually in the US, which has almost double the population, according to the UN.

The majority of victims of lightning are farmers, who are vulnerable to the elements as they work the fields through the rainy monsoon months in the spring and summer.

According to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief and the non-governmental organisation Disaster Forum, at least 3,162 people were killed by lightning strikes from 2011 to 2021.

Bangladesh declared lightning strikes a natural disaster in 2016 after more than 200 people were killed in May that year.

/IANS