Officials trying to determine scale of the disaster Monsoons kill at least 173 across South Asia
Heavy monsoon rains have unleashed landslides and floods that killed at least 173 people in recent days and displaced millions more across northern India, southern Nepal and Bangladesh.
Officials said they were still trying to determine the scale of the disaster as weather forecasters predicted more rain for some areas and casualties were reported in multiple locations across the Himalayan foothills of South Asia.
Nepalese police were searching Monday for scores of people reported missing after rivers burst their banks and killed at least 80, according to police spokesman Pushkar Karki.
“The death toll may go up further as reports come in from remote areas,” Karki said. Many of those killed had drowned or been caught in collapsed houses or under toppled trees.
The floods destroyed key rice crops in Nepal and drove thousands of farmers and their families to take refuge in schools or tents on higher ground, as water submerged roads and cut transport to affected areas. Near the Nepalese village of Kunauli, on the border with India, people were sheltering in tents pitched along the main highway after the land
on both sides became inundated.
Cows and buffalo meandered between the tents and poisonous snakes slithered through the water.
Electricity and cellular phone services were cut off. Soldiers passed out clean water, grain and rice, which people were cooking on small, kerosene-fuelled stoves. But aid workers said some did not have enough food or water.
“The heavy rains hit at one of the worst times, shortly after farmers planted their rice crop,” Sumnima Shrestha, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-based anti-poverty charity Heifer International, said
in a statement. “Making matters worse, large numbers of livestock have been swept away in the flash flooding.”
Across Nepal’s southern border, flooding swamped seven districts in the Indian state of Bihar and left more than half a million people homeless. Officials said two people had also died.
Bangladesh was bracing for worse flooding Monday, as weather forecasters predicted more rain. At least 18 major rivers were flowing at dangerously high levels, according to the state-run Flood Forecasting and Warning Center.