India and Nepal blamed each other yesterday for some of the worst flooding in South Asia in decades, which has affected 25 million people and left rescuers scrambling to help victims.
Officials in Bihar, the Indian state worst affected by the inundation, said neighboring Nepal had failed to build dams to control water surging down from the Himalayas.
But Nepal hit back immediately, claiming that Indian dams were to blame for the flooding in Nepal.
PHOTO: AFP
"We can't do anything about the amount of water coming from Nepal," said Purna Kumari Subedi, member of parliament for Nepal's Banke District, which borders Bihar.
"The same thing happened last year. Because of the dam constructed at Laxmanpur on the Indian side, a lot more land on the Nepali side was extremely flooded, affecting thousands of people," Subedi said.
The dam was against Nepal's interests and should be destroyed, she said.
Nepal's foreign ministry said India could have helped to alleviate the flooding upstream in the Himalayan kingdom.
"Some of the Terai plains areas bordering India were flooded because dams on the Indian side were kept closed," said Arjun Bahadur Thapa, Nepal's foreign ministry spokesman.
"We have not been able to sit for talks with our Indian counterparts about this as we are both busy dealing with the flooding," he said.
Torrential monsoon rains caused flooding and landslides that have killed at least 93 people and affected about 270,000 in Nepal.
But flooding described as the worst in 30 years has affected 11.5 million people in Bihar. More than 90 people have died in the last two weeks.
More than 6,000 villages were submerged with at least 2 million people living outdoors, said Manoj Srivastava, the state's disaster management chief.
The skies cleared yesterday, but a UN official warned that rivers upstream in Nepal were still overflowing, making it unlikely the flood water would recede soon.
Bihar authorities have sought federal government intervention to tackle the issue with Nepal, claiming excessive water flow had engulfed hundreds of villages in the Indian state that in the past had been unaffected by flooding.
"We have written to the prime minister to take up the issue with the Nepalese authorities," Bihar's chief minister Nitish Kumar said in the state capital of Patna.
"Floods are an annual feature because all rivers originating in the upper regions of the Himalayan kingdom send massive amounts of water, especially into northern regions of the state," Kumar said.
Rains have eased in Nepal but authorities are concerned about outbreaks of water borne diseases as villagers slowly begin to return to their homes.
In the Indian eastern state of Orissa, at least 30,000 homeless people were living without food and water as heavy monsoon showers continued, officials said yesterday.
"I don't have a morsel to eat at home and have not been able to go the market also," said Sanjay Rout, a government employee confined to his house for days in Bhubaneswar, the partially flooded state capital.
Schools and colleges were shut and hundreds of people moved to higher ground.
At least 17 people have either drowned or been killed in lightning strikes in Orissa since last Saturday.
In the northeastern state of Assam, hundreds of private doctors began volunteering to help government hospitals cope with an influx of people with dysentery, diarrhea, fevers and skin diseases.
"There is every possibility of an outbreak of epidemic in the state," said Nareswar Dutta, president of the state branch of the Indian Medical Association.
"We have asked all our mem-bers in Assam to provide all possible services to the people in flood-affected areas," Dutta said.
Health workers said Assam's overcrowded relief camps have become unhygienic as people are crammed together with cattle and poultry.
"Most of the sick are children," one official said.
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS