NEW DELHI, 4 August 2007 — Dozens more people perished in torrents of monsoon rains that have marooned some 20 million in northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal, officials said yesterday.
In India alone the number of dead topped 1,000 with new victims reported from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam where 25 of 27 districts are inundated.
There were 21 deaths overnight in three eastern districts hardest hit by the heavy flooding, Uttar Pradesh Relief Commissioner Umesh Sinha said.
“An estimated 20 million people are believed to be affected in all three countries in what is being described as the worst flooding in living memory,” the United Nations’ children’s fund UNICEF said in a statement. “The sheer size and scale of the flooding and the massive numbers of people affected pose an unprecedented challenge to the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance,” it said.
A total of 1,028 people have died in India in the annual downpour that begins in June and lasts until September, according to officials and media reports.
“The situation is under control now,” Sinha said after announcing 1,650 paramilitary and army personnel had been deployed along with civilian rescue teams to help some 1.4 million flood-hit people. Many rivers were in spate, breaching embankments and dikes, he added.
The weather office in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state, forecast “heavy to very heavy rains expected in the next 24 hours.”
The monsoon regularly brings flooding to South Asia but this year has seen some of the worst in recent times with the north and east particularly hard hit.
In Bihar state, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar described the flood situation as “grim” with more than seven million people cut off by overflowing rivers. “It’s not possible to reach all the people by boat. The only alternative is airdropping relief material,” Nitish Kumar said of the state’s worst-hit Darbhanga district. “Sixteen of the state’s 38 districts are under water. That means some 3,614 villages are affected,” A.K Chowdhury, Bihar chief secretary, said by phone.
Flooding has destroyed crops planted over 630,000 hectares and early estimates suggest losses of 450 million rupees ($11 million) in the state, he said.
“The flood situation is very very serious, the situation we have now is unprecedented in the past 30 years,” Chowdhury said.
Further east in Bangladesh, authorities reported another 11 deaths taking the annual monsoon toll to 191. Disaster management minister Tapan Chowdhury said thousands of army and civilian personnel had been mobilized.
Around 6.9 million Bangladeshis were either displaced or marooned in villages, he said, adding that of those an estimated 200,000 had taken refuge in government shelters.
