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| Wednesday, 9 July 2003 |
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Death toll from northeastern India floods rises to 18 GUWAHATI, India, Tuesday (AFP) The death toll due to floods in northeastern India rose to 18 with the number of displaced in the region now estimated at more than 1.2 million, officials said Tuesday. Five people, including a child, drowned in separate incidents in the west of Assam state Monday, a police spokesman said. "All the five died in separate incidents when their wooden boats capsized as they were trying to escape the fury of the floods," the spokesman said. "The flood situation is very critical in parts of western and eastern Assam with heavy rains all over the area," Assam Flood Control Minister Nurzamal Sarkar told AFP. At least 200,000 more people were left homeless after the Brahmaputra River burst its banks at several places overnight washing away homes and breaching roads and mud embankments, local officials and police said. The worst-hit areas in Assam have been the eastern districts of Dhemaji, Jorhat and North Lakhimpur, besides northern Darrang and Sonitpur districts. Meanwhile surging rivers triggered more flooding in central and northwestern Bangladesh where two more deaths were reported Tuesday pushing the toll from three months of bad weather to 67. The mass-circulation Ittefaq said a six year-old boy and an elderly villager died of diarrhoeal disease in the northwestern Gaibandha district after waters from flash floods began to recede. While no official death toll has been provided for the country as a whole, the deaths bring the number reported dead to 67, with most killed in landslides in the southeastern hill tracts late last month. Officials in Dhaka's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said rolling waters from the north were flooding more low-lying central districts, including the capital Dhaka. But they hoped the situation in some badly hit northern districts including Gaibandha, Kurigram and nearby Sirajganj would improve within a few days as heavy rains and the deluge from across the border in India eased. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been marooned or moved to safer places. In neighbouring India, 18 people have been reported dead and more than 1.4 million displaced. Meanwhile thirteen people have died, thousands of villages are besieged and more than a million residents are stranded in the worst floods since 1991 in China's Huai River valley, officials said Tuesday. The death toll rose overnight from five to 13, according to the Xinhua news agency. Ministry of Civil Affairs statistics show the three provinces in the valley - Anhui, Jiangsu and Henan - have suffered total economic losses of nearly 7.2 billion yuan (871 million US dollars). Most of the destruction has been in central China's Anhui province, where eight people have been killed and 18 million affected, with 12 million severely affected, said Wang Xintao, an official from the provincial civil affairs department. "It's the worst flooding since 1991 in terms of the volume of rainfall and water level," Wang told AFP. Xinhua said more than 5,700 villages in Anhui are besieged by floodwaters. Wang said 378,900 people living in the flood valley have been relocated to higher ground, but even highlands were surrounded by water, leaving a 1.14 million residents there stranded. |
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