NEW DELHI, July 13: Massive flooding in South Asia, being described as the worst ''in recent memory'', has swamped thousands of villages and marooned at least 5.7 million people, officials said on Tuesday.
In India, about 3.7 million people have been displaced with an estimated 3,200 villages under water, an Indian flood control official said, while another official in neighbouring Bangladesh said about two million people were marooned by the rising waters.
"This is the worst flooding in recent memory with 22 of the 24 districts in Assam under floodwater," said Tarun Gogoi, chief minister of Assam, one of India's worst affected states in the northeast.
"The high water current has washed away rows and rows of villages. The condition of the people is really devastating," he said. Two people were washed away in Assam's Nalbari district, taking the state's death toll in recent floods to 67 and the national toll to 101.
Bangladesh reported 13 deaths due to floods and landslides while Nepal reported 46 fatalities, taking the death toll in South Asia to 160 since the monsoon rains began mid-June.
Army personnel have been called out in Nepal and eastern and northeastern India to rescue the affected people and distribute relief. The Brahmaputra River which criss-crosses Assam state was flowing at least 1.5 metres to 2.6 metres above the danger level. Several parts of the state remained cut off as floodwaters swamped highways.
Hundreds of thousands of people were taking shelter on raised bamboo stilts and on mud embankments, with some trapped on the rooftops of their mud-and-straw huts. In Arunachal Pradesh state which borders Assam, heavy landslides and flooding have cut off several districts from the rest of the country, an official said.
Torrential rains have triggered landslides in Tripura and Manipur. Road links between the two states and the rest of India have been blocked since Monday. Floods and landslides have also hit the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where at least a dozen bridges have been washed away, a Bhutanese foreign ministry official said by telephone from the capital, Thimphu.
In Bangladesh, people stranded in northeastern Sylhet district said they had been trapped in their villages for six days, adding that food supplies were running low and they had no access to fresh water.
"The waters are besieging us. We've been completely cut off for six days and we haven't got any food or fresh water because the wells have gone under water," a resident of one flood-surrounded village said.
"We don't have boats so we're trapped. We're waiting for relief but none has come yet." The country has been lashed by monsoon rains that have hampered rescue efforts and caused rivers to overflow.
The low-lying South Asian nation suffers flooding every year during the monsoon in which many die or are left homeless. At least 32,000 hectares of land have been submerged by the rains so far, officials said. -AFP
