Thousands in need of aid after floods
KATHMANDU, Nepal — The death toll mounted Monday from flooding and landslides caused by torrential weekend rains in India and Nepal, as rescuers carried out desperate searches for survivors and officials in nearby Bangladesh braced for the floodwaters to move downstream.
The hardesthit country appeared to be Nepal, where police said Monday that 67 people had died as a result of the monsoonal rains that began Thursday night and set off widespread flooding, particularly in the country’s southern plains along the India border.
Officials said that at least 68 others had been injured in landslides and flooding and that an additional 30 people were missing.
Nine major highways in Nepal had been blocked by floods and mudslides, 3,366 people had been rescued and 16,520 households had been temporarily displaced as of Monday, the National Emergency Operation Center said. No estimates on property or infrastructure damage were available.
“We are trying to provide dry foods — rice, noodles and biscuits — to flood victims, but it’s not easy to access affected people as whole villages are inundated and roads connecting to those villages are damaged,” said Ajay Gupta, the mayor of Gaur, a town along Nepal’s southern border with India.
In India, at least 25 people have died so far from the rains and floods, said Mohamad Farukh, the chief executive of Rapid Response, a nongovernmental charity focusing on disaster relief. Indian officials said a day earlier that about 750 people from the worstaffected states, Assam and Bihar, had been rescued over the preceding three or four days.
In the northern Indian town of Solan, which lies in a hilly border region hit by heavy rains, seven soldiers and one civilian died after a 3story building suddenly collapsed, officials told the Associated Press on Monday. They said 31 people had been rescued, and that the soldiers had been having a party in the building’s groundfloor restaurant when the collapse occurred.
In Bangladesh, 14 deaths have been recorded as a result of flooding in lowlying areas of the country since July 9, and 60,000 families in those areas were still “marooned in their home or community shelters” as of Sunday, the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society said in a report.