Death toll in South Asian floods tops 360

Indian air force helicopters swept low over the flooded plains of northern India today, dropping desperately needed aid to some 2 million people marooned by some of the worst flooding to hit the area in 30 years, officials said.

The death toll from the recent flooding surged past 360 even as the waters began to recede across northern India and Bangladesh and aid workers scrambled to prevent an outbreak of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases.

At least 15 people died Monday when heavy currents sank their boat on the flood-swollen Ganges River in Bihar state. Another 30 people were still missing, said Manoj Shrivastav, the Bihar state disaster management secretary.

As the flood waters receded in Bihar, 13 bloated bodies were recovered.

Also in Bihar, a teenager fell from his roof and drowned in floodwaters as he tried to catch a food drop.

Helicopters dropped more than 4,300 food packets to desperate residents in Bihar, said Shrivastav.

But authorities have been criticised for being too slow to respond to the crisis with too little aid.

Starving residents were fighting each other over food packets, and in the Darbhanga district hundreds of angry people briefly kidnapped a senior official and the local police chief over the weekend, only releasing them after receiving promises that an aid distribution centre would be set up there, said Upendera Sharma, a local government official.

Shrivastav said the monsoon rains were the heaviest to hit the state in 30 years with 34.5 inches of rain in 15 days, surpassing the record of more than 23.6 inches.

In the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state residents complained that aid was insufficient and demanded assistance in rebuilding.

Kedar Nisar on Monday said that he had received only 22 pounds of rice from the government in the past week. The 62-year-old man makes a living by rowing a boat, taking people to villages across the river.

“I need money to rebuild my home,” he said as he prepared to return to his village.

As rains eased doctors and paramedics started supplying medicine to people to prevent diarrhoea, skin allergies and other waterborne diseases, said S K Gupta, an Indian army officer.

Army doctors treated 235 people suffering from waterborne diseases in makeshift camps near Gorakhpur, a town 155 miles south-east of Uttar Pradesh’s state capital, Lucknow, said Gupta. “Our effort is to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic.”

In Bangladesh, the country’s military-backed interim leader, Fakhruddin Ahmed, appealed to all Bangladeshis to join army and government efforts to aid the flood-affected people. “Any natural disaster like floods brings an opportunity for the nation to stand united,” Ahmed said in a late night address Sunday.

There has been no significant rainfall in the region for three days.

Since the start of the monsoon in June, the government says more than 1,200 people have died in India alone, with scores of others killed in Bangladesh and neighbouring Nepal, where floods have hit low-lying southern parts of the country.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent, a deluge that spreads floods and landslides across the region and kills many people every year.

So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced by flooding, according to government figures.

However, officials said the flooding was due to an unusual monsoon pattern and not due to global warming.

“These (floods) were coming 50 years ago and today also,” said BP Yadav, the director of government-run Northern Hemisphere Analysis Centre. “There was nothing all of a sudden. It was well anticipated, well expected and well predicted.”