CNN : Monsoon floods displace 19 million

Monsoon floods displace 19 million

CNN | August 4, 2007

LUCKNOW, India (AP) -- Havoc from monsoon rains killed another 12 people in India, including two children swept away by floods and a man attacked by a rhinoceros forced out of its inundated habitat, officials said Saturday.

Helicopters dropped food to hundreds of thousands of frightened villagers perched on rooftops.

Vital to farmers, the annual rains are a blessing and a curse for the subcontinent. At least 198 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days, according to government figures.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's always dangerous -- last year more than 1,000 people died, most from drowning, landslides or house collapses.

This year, estimates of total deaths vary wildly from a few hundred to well over 1,000.

Two villagers were killed in a house collapse and two children were swept away by flood waters in several districts of India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. Another person died from a snake bite on a flooded road, said Surender Shrivastav, a state official.

Helicopters dropped food to nearly 2 million people in 2,200 villages cut off by flood waters in the worst-hit eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, said Umesh Sinha, the state relief commissioner, adding that nearly 279,223 acres of paddy rice crops have been destroyed in the region.

On Friday, six people drowned in northeastern Assam state. One-horned rhinos straying from the state's Kaziranga National Park killed one person and injured two others, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

Jehir Ali, 28, was riding a bicycle near the village of Gendheli when a rhino charged at him, said Dhiren Gogoi, a wildlife official.

"Ali fell down and was badly mauled by the adult rhino. He was shifted to a hospital where he died," Gogoi told The Associated Press.

Seventy percent of Kaziranga Park has been flooded by the Brahmaputra River, forcing out several rhinos.

"Two rhinos have entered villages in the area resulting in panic among the population," Diganta Barbaruah, another wildlife official, said.

With hundreds of villages submerged across the fertile plains that stretch along the southern edge of the Himalayas, people were taking refuge wherever they could.

Women and children were spotted screaming for help from treetops in Uttar Pradesh. In parts of the state, river levels rose so quickly that villagers had no time to save any belongings.

"The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react," Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV.

One woman in Uttar Pradesh who identified herself only as Savitra said she had not "eaten anything for the last two days."

Health workers were fanning out across parts of Bangladesh and India to try to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.

In northwestern Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2,000 people who fled their flooded village for higher ground in the Sirajganj district.

"The floods have taken away all I had," said the 40-year-old Sheikh. "Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive."

Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 144 people have died in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.

India's Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains.

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