Monsoon floods leave more than a million homeless

Authorities took control of all private boats in the five flood-hit districts of Bihar state today as desperate villagers hijacked rescue vessels and looted food and other essentials while flooding spread to new areas of northern India along the Nepal border, officials said.

About 1.2 million people have been left homeless and scores killed in the impoverished state in the two weeks since the monsoon-swollen Kosi river in neighbouring Nepal burst its banks, dramatically changing course and spilling billions of gallons of water into the plains of northern India.