INDIA:Incessant monsoon rains for over a week have inundated a wide swath of northern India alongside neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal, killing almost 170 people and displacing over 20 million.
Officials said many of the rivers in the contiguous Indian states of Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh - some of which flow into Bangladesh and Nepal - had burst their banks at many places, washing away villages and farmland that sustain millions.
A third of Bangladesh, a country that is predominantly low-lying, is inundated, with almost 40 people killed and some five million affected by the floods. The country's military-backed interim government has said it is doing its best to cope.
Nepali authorities said 86 people had died in the torrential rainfall that continues unabated. Ensuring aid to far-flung areas in the mountainous state was proving a difficult task, officials said. "The situation is grim," said Bhumidhar Barman, a minister in northeastern India's Assam state where army units have been deployed to cope with the floods. Almost six million people were camping across Assam on any dry piece of land they could find - embankments or roofs of their homes - waiting for relief while some 100,000 were staying in government relief camps or makeshift shelters.
Dibakar Misra, a government official in Assam's worst-hit Dhemaji region said railway services had been suspended after a long stretch of track was damaged. Scores of passengers had to be rescued in boats as waters, in some places, were nine metres deep.
"We couldn't do anything as it happened in a flash. Now, we have to depend on the few row boats we have until the floods recede."
Dozens of roads and bridges in Bihar and Assam have been damaged, making it harder for the authorities to get relief material to those affected. The army is using helicopters to drop supplies, but aid agencies are already warning of shortages of food and drinking water.
Medical teams were braving swirling flood waters in boats to ensure that no outbreak of water-born diseases such as cholera occurs but advised caution.
The monsoon season across south Asia runs from June to September and is vital to the region's agriculture, the predominant source of sustenance for the region.
But with environmental changes over the years, triggered by global warming, the monsoons have become dangerous with some 1,000 people dying last year by drowning, landslides, house collapses and electrocution.
India's meteorological department in New Delhi said unusual monsoon patterns this year had resulted in heavier than usual rains in the flooded regions, with central India having only light showers.