Floods kill at least 38 people in East Nusa Tenggara

JAKARTA (JP): Floods following two days of rain in East Nusa Tenggara have killed at least 38 people and swept through hundreds of homes, Antara said on Thursday.

In its evening news broadcast on Thursday, state television TVRI quoted data issued by the provincial administration as saying that 125 people had died and no less than 160 houses severely damaged in the floods.

The victims were from all from Betun village in Central Malaka, close to the border with East Timor, the head of the Belu district which oversees the area, Marselius Bere told Antara.

Bere said the rains, which began on Tuesday, had swollen the Benenai River which broke its banks the following day, swamping most of the Central Malaka subdistrict.

The fate of a number of farmers in Besikama village, in neighboring West Malaka subdistrict, remains unclear because floodwater have cut off all access roads, Bere said.

In some areas, floodwater has reportedly reached up to two meters in depth, he added.

The head of the Belu district social affairs' office, Untung, was quoted by the agency as saying rescue workers had been deployed to evacuate residents from the flood-stricken areas.

But evacuation efforts were hampered because several bridges have been swept away by the floodwaters, he said.

Hundreds of houses, including many sheltering East Timorese refugees, an elementary school building and hundreds of hectares of farmland have been under water since early Wednesday in the two subdistricts of Belu, Untung said.

Bere said he had sought assistance, in the form of helicopters and rubber boats, from authorities in the provincial capital of Kupang.

Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement on Wednesday over 161,000 East Timor refugees had returned to their homeland.

"As of May 16, IOM and UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) have organized the return by land, sea and air of 116,495 East Timorese from East Nusa Tenggara, other parts of Indonesia and from Australia," it said.

"The total number of returnees now stands at 161,217."

Some 250,000 people fled to East Nusa Tenggara during the post-ballot violence in East Timor in September last year. (byg/mds)