Landslides triggered by heavy rains buried at least 12 people in their homes while six people drowned in surging river waters as floods rav-aged parts of South Asia yesterday.
More than seven million people have been marooned or left homeless in villages and towns across eastern India, Nepal and Bangladesh after annual monsoon floods inundated large tracts of land.
Government helicopters brought packages of food and relief material such as tarpaulin sheets to thousands of villagers in Nepal and India where thousands were stranded on rooftops.
PHOTO: AFP
Close to 170 people have died in densely-populated South Asia since the start of July as heavy monsoon rains set off landslides and caused dozens of rivers to overflow.
Officials in India's Assam state, where two million people have lost their homes because of flooding, said they found it hard to cope with the sheer scale of flooding.
"The state is not adequately equipped to handle the rescue and relief operations," said Tarun Gogoi, the chief minister who appealed for international assistance on Monday.
People negotiated flooded areas of Assam in boats made from the trunks of banana trees and bamboos, and loaded with clothes and cooking utensils.
In some flooded areas of Bangla-desh, overflowing rivers submerged crops and cut rail and road links, pushing up food prices.
Twenty-five of the country's 64 districts have been hit by flooding and millions marooned. Officials fear outbreaks of water-borne diseases as thousands of drinking wells have been submerged.
Most of the deaths were in Nepal, where 12 people were killed in landslides in the east, pushing to 48 the impoverished nation's death toll from landslides, drowning and snake bites this season. Floodwaters have washed away bridges and felled electrical lines, although in other areas waters were receding.
"Though water levels have fallen, people are scared to return home as they fear their mud and brick houses will collapse," resident Brij Kumar Yadhav said in Janakpur, 450km east of Kathmandu.
The region's monsoon, which has yet to provide good rains to south and central India, is vital for the farm-dependent economies.
About 3.7 million people have been displaced with an estimated 3,200 villages under water, a flood control official said.
The Brahmaputra River, which criss-crosses the state of Assam, was flowing at least 1.5m to 2.6m above the danger level.
"We are trying our best to provide food and medicines to the victims. But then as we all know, it is next to impossible to meet the needs of millions of flood-hit people," Assam Health Minister Bhumidhar Barman said.
Floods and landslides have also hit the neighboring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where a dozen bridges have been washed away.
Meanwhile, floodwaters Tuesday entered the Kaziranga Wildlife Sanctuary in Assam, forcing scores of endangered animals to flee.
The 430-square-kilometer park east of Guwahati is home to the world's largest concentration of one-horned rhinoceros. There are an estimated 1,600 rhinos at Kaziranga out of a total world population of some 2,300.
"Herds of elephants, deer, wild buffaloes and rhinos from the park are migrating to an adjoining hill for safety," another park official said.
Park officials said they were also worried about poachers killing animals, especially rhinos and elephants, as the animals move out of the sanctuary.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS