70 Die, 1,000 Hurt as More Storms Batter Weary Bangladesh : Relief effort: U.S. task force is given diplomatic status. There is no word on how long it will stay.

Another bout of storms killed more than 70 people and injured 1,000 in Bangladesh during the weekend, officials and news reports said Monday.

Tornadoes, squalls, rain and floods have plagued the country since April 30, when a cyclone and tidal wave killed at least 139,000 people. More than 215 people have died in storms and floods this month.

A 7,000-member U.S. military task force is bringing food, medicine and other relief to millions of cyclone survivors, who are beset by hunger, disease and exposure to foul weather.

The U.S. Marines and sailors, bound for California from the Persian Gulf War, were diverted to Bangladesh for the relief-and-rescue operation.

Since the American operation started last Wednesday, the task force has delivered 800 tons of food and medicine, Bangladeshi relief officials said.

The United States and Bangladesh on Monday signed a “memorandum of understanding” on the role of task force personnel providing relief operations to cyclone-hit victims in Bangladesh.

Foreign Secretary Abul Ahsan, who initialed the agreement, told reporters that the task force has come “at the invitation of the Bangladesh government and will leave Bangladesh whenever the government wishes.”

U.S. Ambassador William Milam signed on behalf of his government.

The agreement says task force members will have diplomatic status during their stay. The agreement did not specify how long the U.S. troops will remain.

Officials in Barisal, 75 miles south of Dhaka, said Monday that the death toll from a tornado Saturday night rose to 25.

The tornado ripped through 47 villages, destroying 12,000 mud-and-thatch houses. At least 200 people were injured, officials said in telephone interviews.

The newspaper Khabar put the tornado death toll at 50.

Inqilab, another newspaper, said at least 30 people were missing after a boat carrying them sank Sunday in the northeastern Sylhet district.

Ittifaq, another daily, said seven people were feared drowned in Narsingdi, 25 miles east of Dhaka, when a boat capsized in a storm Sunday.

The weather office said rains Sunday worsened the flood situation in the northeast where four more people drowned, raising the official death toll to 89.

Bangladesh’s most devastating floods usually occur in July and August when the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers, which originate in the Himalayan mountains, burst their banks.

The two rivers, among the biggest in the country, are rising but remain below flood stage.