Flooding and landslides in north and east India have killed nearly 1,000 people and affected the lives of millions, officials in Lucknow said yesterday.
State officials said more than half of Uttar Pradesh state was submerged, with 45 out of 83 districts hit by floods. In the past 24 hours, 81 people had died, they said, bringing the death toll to 998 in the last two weeks.
Much of the sub-continent is similarly affected. Two-thirds of Bangladesh is submerged and over 400 lives have been lost there.
China's commercial banks will increase lending by up to one trillion yuan (about £86 billion) to help agriculture and industry rebound from devastating floods, state media said yesterday.
Central bank vice-governor Mr Shang Fulin was quoted by state television as saying that commercial banks would make the loans over the next four months.
More than 30 million people have been affected in India's most populous state, and about a million have been marooned by rivers which have burst their banks.
The state government has set up 646 relief centres at schools and colleges to provide shelter to some 492,000 people evacuated from different areas.
About 7,200 boats have been deployed to evacuate flood victims and provide relief. Officials said 20 to 25 tonnes of food were being airdropped daily.
Flowing muddy waters have swept away more than 40,000 houses in neighbouring West Bengal, leaving 15 dead and affecting 1.19 million.
In Malda, one of the worst-hit areas, attention focussed on the water level of the Ganges. "It is not able to take water from its tributaries, which are flooding large areas," said Mr M.V. Rao, Malda's district magistrate.
In central Nepal, at least 46 bodies have been recovered from a weekend landslide. More than 70 others are feared dead.
In Bangladesh, the worst floods in a decade have taken a "critical turn" and victims need immediate help to survive, the head of the state's biggest humanitarian organisation, General Abdus Salam, said on Sunday.
"When we made the first appeal for help 10 days after the flooding started on July 13th, no one imagined it would take on such a huge magnitude," the retired infantry commander, now chairman of the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, told Reuters.
"The floods have taken a critical turn," he said in an interview in his office in Dhaka's Malitola district, which could be reached only by boat. "I assume the current floods have assumed the level of 1988 floods and might have a much bigger impact on life and economy when waters recede," he said.
Floods have killed more than 400 people, wrecked crops and led to epidemics in the past seven weeks, and aid workers said they saw no significant respite yet.
The 1988 floods killed more than 5,000 people, but officials and aid workers say they did not last as long as the present inundation, which has left more than two-thirds of the impoverished country under water.
"The floods have seriously affected at least 20 million people who urgently need food, medicine and clothing," General Salam said. The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, urged the international community at the weekend to respond generously to an appeal for emergency aid of £48 million.
The floods were triggered by heavy monsoon rains. Millions of people have been left homeless or marooned, facing serious shortages of food and drinking water. Diarrhoea has affected nearly 120,000 people and so far at least 85 have died, health officials said. People were also suffering from viral fever, scabies and various other health problems.