Floods, landslides in South Asia kill over 1,200

More than 1,200 people have been killed by flooding andlandslides in northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh as intense rainfall has slammed theregion for weeks.

Tens of thousands of homes, schools and hospitals have been destroyed by the monsoon rains, and the United Nations estimates that almost 41 million people have been affected in the three countries.

In India, floods have swept across the states of Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and other areas.

On Tuesday night, an especially heavy storm lashed Mumbai.

In 2005, in that same area, more than 1,000 people died — including 570 people in a single day after a cloudburst dumped three feet of rain — during the monsoon season. The rains Tuesday were bad, but nowhere near the deluge of 2005.

The city’s Santacruz weather center recorded about 13 inches of rain in 24 hours that ended at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the most since a little over 37 inches of precipitation recorded 12 years ago. The authorities said at least five people died.

By Wednesday, the city snapped back to normal. Traffic flowed down the mud-streaked boulevards and cleanup crews sawed apart downed trees. Parts of the city still smelled fishy, though, possibly from a tidal surge that mixed with the rainwater and submerged entire streets.

“India’s Houston” was the headline one news site used for a Mumbai flood story. Another paper ran side-by-side photos of the floods in each place.

Elsewhere, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent said on its website that more than 8 million Bangladeshis had been affected by the flooding, the worst in 40 years. At least 140 people have died and nearly 700,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Matthew Marek, the head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the International Federation, says about half of the country’s 64 districts are flooded.

“Right now the focus is not on rescue,” Mr. Marek says. “The focus is on actually delivering aid — food, clean drinking water, as well as assistance in the form of hygieneitems, et cetera.”

Farmland in Bangladesh has been particularly devastated. It’s a huge blow to the agriculture-dependent country, which already lost around 700,000 metric tons of rice in flash floods this year.

In Nepal, thousands of homes have been destroyed and dozens of people swept away. Elephants were pressed into service, wading through swirling waters to rescue people, and aid workers have built rafts from bambooand banana leaves.

But many people are still missing, and some families have held last rites without their loved ones’ bodies being found.

“This is the severest flooding in a number of years,” Francis Markus, spokesman for the International Federation, said by phone from Kathmandu,Nepal’s capital.