August 03, 2007	Friday	Rajab 18, 1428

NEW DELHI: Relief teams in India, Bangladesh and Nepal on Thursday battled to bring food, clean drinking water and medicines to nearly 20 million people stranded in massive flooding.

More than 1,100 people have died across South Asia since the start of the annual monsoon season in mid-June, with the region’s rivers bursting their banks due to relentless rains and snows melting in the Himalayas.

Britain and the United Nations have stepped up to assist local authorities, with London pledging 2.5 million dollars in aid and the world body launching emergency relief operations.

Northern and eastern India has borne the brunt of the disaster, with 1,000 people dead and about 14 million villagers in Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states awaiting much-needed aid amid fears that disease could soon spread.

“Whatever baby food I had is now exhausted and there is no alternative other than trying to forcibly feed my daughter boiled rice,” 27-year-old Rahima Begum, whose home near the Brahmaputra River in Assam is under water, told AFP.

“My son is down with fever and diarrhoea for the last two days,” said labourer Bhairab Madhab, who like Begum lives in the village of Senimari.

“Getting a doctor is a distant dream with floodwaters surrounding us.” Some 5.5 million people have been displaced in Assam, nearly seven million others are stranded in Bihar state, where 3,000 villages have been inundated, officials said. Another 1.5 million have been displaced in Uttar Pradesh.

“Some of these areas are very far-flung,” Uttar Pradesh spokesman Shrish Dubey said. Twenty-eight people drowned in the state on Wednesday when a boat carrying both aid workers and evacuees splintered apart. An official in Bihar’s hard-hit Darbhanga district said the area had been drenched with 875 millimetres (three feet) of rain in July, more than three times what it received during the entire monsoon season last year.

The Indian capital New Delhi was also battered with rain overnight, receiving 166 millimetres of rain in a 24-hour span, more than half its average for the entire month of August.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, where 54 people have lost their lives, officials said 5.6 million had been displaced or marooned in their homes, with about 160,000 now housed in shelters.

Britain’s Department for International Development announced on Thursday that it would give 2.5 million dollars to the relief effort for food, water, shelter and medicine for flood victims.

The United Nations has started flying emergency relief operations to assist hundreds of thousands of Nepalis affected by monsoon-triggered floods and landslides, the world body said.

At least 84 people have been killed since the start of the monsoon season, according to Nepal’s home ministry.—AFP