South Asian monsoon death toll tops 850

Incessant monsoon rains flooded more villages across South Asia today, raising the death toll to 849 in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.

More than 12 million people are homeless or stranded, according to government estimates.

Landslides, lightning strikes, overflowing rivers, waterborne diseases, falling trees and collapsing roofs – constant features of the monsoon season in South Asia – have killed 333 people in India, 202 in Pakistan, 181 in Bangladesh and 133 in Nepal.

Authorities in India’s eastern Bihar state sounded an alert after floods worsened in six districts due to fresh rains. Two rivers, the Bagmati and the Kamala Balan, overflowed their banks and officials began evacuating residents of low-lying areas.

Jagdanand Singh, Bihar’s water resources minister, said the rain-swollen Gandhak River was flowing close to its danger mark. “The sudden swelling of the Gandhak was caused by incessant rain in the catchment area in Nepal during the past two days,” he said.

Schools and district government offices have been converted into temporary shelters for thousands of people who have fled their homes, in danger of being submerged.

Torrential rain in the foothills of the Himalayas have flooded rivers that run through the eastern Indian states of Assam, Bihar and West Bengal, and through neighbouring Bangladesh. The rivers eventually drain into the Bay of Bengal.

In Bangladesh, most of the 181 deaths have been caused by drowning and landslides, but poisonous snakes washed out of their holes bit some people as they waded through the water.

The floods, which began in mid-June, have destroyed nearly 100,000 houses and affected more than three million people in Bangladesh, a delta nation criss-crossed by nearly 250 rivers and their tributaries.