South Asian villages, wildlife reserve devastated by flooding
GUAHATI, India — Rising floodwaters have inundated large parts of a famous wildlife reserve park in northeastern India, killing more than 225 animals and forcing hundreds to flee, the park director said Saturday.
Around 15 rhinos, 185 deer and at least one Royal Bengal tiger have died in the floods that have submerged almost the entire Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, Satyendra Singh said.
Across northern India and neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, the human death toll from drowning, collapsed houses and landslides triggered by annual monsoon rains climbed to around 578 Saturday.
Army and disaster management personnel in the three countries have launched mammoth efforts to evacuate, feed and shelter nearly 16 million people affected by the floods in South Asia.
In the northern Indian state of Bihar, at least 153 people died, said Pratay Amrit, an official in Bihar’s disaster management department. Nearly half a million people were in more than 1,300 state-run relief camps, he said.
In Uttar Pradesh state, the death toll rose to 40 as floodwaters submerged entire villages after 13 small dams were washed away, state officials said.
Officials said 144 people were swept away or drowned in Assam while 60 others died in West Bengal.
At Kaziranga, nearly 80 percent of the 166-squaremile wildlife park was under water. Some of the animals had crossed a highway and moved to higher land. The Assam government has deployed security guards on the highway to protect the rhinos from poachers, said Singh, the park director.
In Nepal, floods have killed around 110 people since June. In Bangladesh, more than 70 people have died over the past week due to drowning or snake bites.