Floods in South Asia Hit 1.5 Million People, Kill 17
Date: 19-Jun-06
Country: INDIA
Officials on the Indian side said 12 people had been killed so far and almost half-a-million affected by the floods, with scores of villages in the state of Assam inundated by overflowing rivers, forcing residents to higher grounds.
"People have started moving to high lands because their houses are now knee-deep under water," Gautom Ganguly, an Assam government official said.
A 12-year-old boy drowned in flood waters and a woman died when a wooden boat carrying a group of people to safety capsized in southern Assam on Thursday, police said.
Earlier this week, 10 people died in western Assam and the neighbouring state of Tripura.
Roads and railway networks have also been disrupted in many places as gushing waters washed away bridges and rail tracks damaged by landslides, officials said.
In Bangladesh, about 10,000 people had been made homeless and a million others were marooned as floods spread in four northeastern districts over the last five days, officials said.
Five people were killed when boats sank or houses collapsed, they added.
Crops on 75,000 acres (30,000 hectares) of land and some 1,000 km (600 miles) of rural roads had also been damaged as the rivers Surma and Kushiara burst their banks at several places.
The flood situation was likely to deteriorate as there was more rain in the region and across the border in India, Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said.
Floods kill hundreds of Bangladeshis and displace thousands of families in the country and large pockets of eastern, northern and central India during the June-September monsoon every year.
