Bangladesh & India Struggle as Floods Leave 100,000's Homeless

Authorities have said they are struggling to respond to flooding in the South Asia region, with waters damaging and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, forcing millions to live on embankments and highways.

|PIC1|The monsoon flooding in the densely populated region, which is crisscrossed by large rivers, has affected over 10 million people, many of whom have been marooned in villages for over a week.

In Bangladesh and eastern India, more than 110 people have been killed over the past nine days -- in drownings, snakebites and house collapses -- and authorities, short of boats, said they were overstretched trying to respond.

Some marooned residents have taken to fishing in flood waters to feed their families.

"My two children have survived for the last two days on a single papaya we took from our neighbour before fleeing home", said Sarsatia Devi, a widow living on an embankment with hundreds of others in the Muzaffarpur district of India's eastern state of Bihar.

Across impoverished Bihar and the northeastern state of Assam, around 5.5 million people have been affected by the flooding.

Tens of thousands of plastic and tarpaulin tents have sprung up in the region, with some of those displaced saying authorities had done little to improve conditions in crowded relief camps.

"There is no one to listen to our woes," Kanak Saikia, whose house was swamped by flood waters, told Reuters over the phone from Dhemaji district in the far east of Assam.

"You just have to visit relief camps to see that people are living in conditions not even fit for animals."

INADEQUATE SUPPLIES

In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least 35 people have died in the past week and more than 4.5 million people are either marooned, displaced or living in water-logged areas.

Nearly 19,000 houses have been destroyed and another 236,000 damaged by rains and flood waters in the impoverished, low-lying country, more than half of which has now been affected by floods.

Hundreds of thousands of homeless have crammed into some 600 relief camps, including school buildings and government offices.

Authorities were handing out food, drinking water and medicine at relief camps, but supplies were short.

"Supplies are far too inadequate, especially baby food and clean water," said Mozaffar Ahmed, a government official in Sirajganj, 150 km (90 miles) north of Dhaka.

The latest flooding in South Asia follows storms, floods and landslides in Pakistan, Nepal and other parts of India over the past five weeks, which left hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless.

Every year, hundreds of people -- sometimes thousands -- die in flooding during the monsoon season, which is vital for agriculture and the economy of the region.

But international aid agencies say governments need to do more to mitigate the impact of the annual flooding.

"If we understand climate change is going to make flooding worse in the subcontinent, it is high time we put our resources into saving lives and reducing the impact of floods," said Aditi Kapoor, South Asia media officer for the international aid group Oxfam, calling for measures such as reinforcing embankments.