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| Wednesday, 14 July 2004 |
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Floods ravage parts of South Asia GUWAHATI, India, Tuesday (Reuters) Landslides triggered by heavy rains buried at least 12 people in their homes while six people drowned in surging river waters as floods ravaged low-lying parts of South Asia on Tuesday. More than seven million people have been marooned or left homeless in villages and towns across eastern India, Nepal and Bangladesh after annual monsoon floods inundated large tracts of land. Government helicopters dropped packages of food and relief material such as tarpaulin sheets to thousands of villagers in Nepal and India where thousands were stranded on rooftops. Close to 170 people have died in densely-populated South Asia since the start of July as heavy monsoon rains caused dozens of rivers to overflow their embankments and set off landslides. Officials in India's tea-rich northeastern state of Assam, where around two million people have lost their homes because of flooding in the past week, said they found it hard to cope with the sheer scale of flooding. "The state is not adequately equipped to handle the rescue and relief operations," Tarun Gogoi, chief minister of Assam who appealed for international assistance on Monday, told Reuters. In some areas of flood-hit Bangladesh, overflowing rivers submerged crops and cut rail and road links, pushing up food prices. Twenty-five of the low-lying country's 64 districts have been hit by flooding and millions marooned. Officials fear outbreaks of water-borne diseases as thousands of drinking wells have been submerged. Most of the deaths were in Nepal, where 12 people were killed in landslides in the east, pushing to 48 the impoverished nation's death toll from landslides, drowning and snake bites this season. Flood waters have washed away bridges and felled electrical lines in some areas. In other areas of the Himalayan kingdom, waters were receding. |
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