Monsoon washes away villages and claims more lives

A RIVER burst its banks and surged through 25 villages while residents slept in northern Bangladesh yesterday, killing 13 - mostly children - as homes, crops and trees were washed away.

The death toll in the South Asia region (including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan) from annual monsoon flooding, fed by melting snow and torrential rains, reached 339.

Some 10,000 villagers were washed out of their flimsy homes as the Jamuna River surged through the mud embankment in Bogra district while people slept, relief officials said.