Flooding swamps Bangladesh, India, China
Flooding swamps Bangladesh, India, China
Associated Press Dhaka/Beijing
Rain-swollen rivers inundated thousands of homes in northern and central Bangladesh, as the death toll in South Asia's raging monsoon flooding climbed to at least 237.
More than 3 million people have been affected in India, Bangladesh and Nepal since the monsoon rains hit in mid-June.
Monsoon floods have submerged a third of Bangladesh - a low- lying delta nation -- in the past two weeks, killing at least 113 people.
Seven people died Friday when their small wooden boat capsized in swirling flood waters in northern Rangpur district, 250 kilometers north of the Bangladesh capital, a local administrator said on condition of anonymity.
Also on Friday, a six-year-old child and a 55-year-old woman were swept away by gushing flood waters in Jamalpur district, 80 kilometers north of Dhaka, local police said.
Floodwaters have damaged or washed away thousands of flimsy huts and sections of mud levees along river banks. Surging waters have also drowned livestock and swamped rice fields, and submerged roads and rail tracks, disrupting communications in the parts of northern and central Bangladesh.
In neighboring India, the weather office predicted more moderate to heavy rainfall in the deluged northeastern Assam state, where a tributary of the rain-swollen Brahmaputra river -- one of the largest in Asia -- changed course Friday, washing away homes in Madarbari village, police said.
More than 2.2 million people have been affected in the state, with 20 of its 24 districts under water, said Assam's Flood Control Minister Nurjamal Sarkar. Homes and roads have been submerged, cattle drowned, and people driven from their villages to higher ground.
In eastern Chine, at least 55,700 people were being evacuated in eastern China on Saturday as authorities rushed to cope with some of the worst flooding in more than a decade.
On its noon newscast, China Central Television showed hundreds of volunteers - some waist-deep in water - feverishly piling sandbags to shore up embankments along Hongze Lake in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
Residents around the lake were being moved to safety as officials prepared to divert flood waters, said the head of the Xuyi County propaganda office who would only give his surname, Zhang. " By 6 p.m. Sunday, all the women, children and elderly will be evacuated," Zhang said. "Young people will be asked to help strengthen dikes."
In the hard-hit province of Anhui, which borders Jiangsu, officials have said that 16 people have been killed in this season's floods and more than a million people have been stranded by rising waters.
On Saturday, an official from the Anhui Provincial Anti-flood Headquarters said water levels in the Huai River were still increasing in some parts "but there was no big, dangerous situation".