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Science - AFP
More than 1.1 million homeless after monsoon floods in India, Bangladesh
Mon Jul 7, 4:08 AM ET
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GUWAHATI, India (AFP) - More than 1.1 million people have been left homeless by monsoon floods in India and neighbouring Bangladesh, which have reportedly also left more than 80 dead, officials and reports said.

Photo
AFP Photo

 

At least 65,000 more people were left homeless after fresh flooding overnight in India's northeastern state of Assam, taking the total number of those displaced by the rains to more than 926,000.

The mighty Brahmaputra River burst its banks at several places Saturday washing away homes and breaching roads and mud embankments.

"A total of 19 of the state's 24 districts were hit by the floods affecting some 916,453 people," an Assam government statement said.

At least 10,000 people have been displaced in the neighbouring state of Tripura.

The floods that began on June 27 in Assam have claimed the lives of 13 people, officials said.

"The situation has turned critical in many parts of the state with the river taking a deadly mood," Assam Revenue Minister Mithias Tudu told AFP.

An outbreak of malaria and water-borne diseases in flood-hit areas is making life even more difficult.

At least nine more people died of malaria in various parts of eastern and western Assam during the past week, taking the toll due to malaria and Japanese encephalitis to 69 since the beginning of June.

For tens of thousands of people taking shelter on mud embankments and other raised platforms, there have been acute shortages of food and drinking water.

"So far we are yet to get any government relief in the form of rations or other supplies," Tarini Deka, a village elder in the eastern district of Morigaon, told AFP.

"We are starving and if the government does not come to our aid soon, many people will die of hunger."

In the eastern state of Bihar, some 200,000 have been affected by floods, officials said.

All major rivers in the state, especially in the northern districts, were flowing above danger levels as waters spilled into residential areas at several places, they said.

The local media have put the death toll from the floods at 12 but the relief department has not confirmed any so far.

More than 350 people were killed in the state in floods last year.

In Bangladesh fresh areas were submerged Sunday as flood waters gushed in to the Bay of Bengal, leaving tens of thousands of people stranded or forced to move to safer places, officials and reports said.

 

Newspapers, including the mass-circulation Janakantha daily, said 14 of Bangladesh's 64 districts were flooded.

The mass-circulation Daily Ittefaq reported Sunday that five more people, four of them children, drowned Saturday in three flood-hit areas.

The unofficial death toll since monsoon rains started hammering deltaic Bangladesh in May now stands at 60, with most killed in landslides in the southeastern hill tracts last week.

Officials in the disaster ministry's control room, however, said the situation was normal and expected nothing serious in the coming weeks.

Bangladesh's four-month full monsoon starts this month when the average monthly rainfall varies from 1,194 to 3,454 millimetres (48 to 138 inches).

In 1988, three months of sustained flooding left several hundred people dead and caused millions of dollars in damage, while in 1998 Bangladesh suffered the worst floods in a century, leaving millions homeless and causing massive damage.

burs-an/mmc


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