Rescue crews
used boats and military helicopters Monday to help some of the
millions of people washed out of their homes by floods believed
to have killed more than 700 in India and Bangladesh.
Authorities
were to trying to ferry victims to higher ground, but most remained
marooned atop buildings. Air force helicopters were dropping food
and water purification packets.
The vast majority
of the deaths have been in India, but the toll in both countries
was expected to rise, and waterborne diseases were said to be
breaking out.
``The task
is gigantic. There are many villages that have been cut off as
floods inundated roads,'' Sohel Ahsan, a relief worker in Bangladesh,
said in a telephone interview.
Almost all
the districts on either side of the southern India-Bangladesh
border have been ravaged since Sept. 18, when late monsoon rains
sent sudden water over riverbanks and dams. The floods have submerged
highways, villages and the homes of more than 10 million people
in eastern India and 200,000 in Bangladesh, authorities say.
In the Indian
state of West Bengal, 652 people were feared dead, more than half
of them in Murshidabad district, said Buddhadev Bhattacharjee,
the state's deputy chief minister. The death toll rose to 39 on
Monday in the neighboring state of Bihar.
Bhattacharjee,
who made an aerial survey Monday of the worst-hit areas of West
Bengal, said 435 bodies had been recovered and 217 more people
were washed away by the strong currents. There was scant hope
of their survival, he said.
Most of the
deaths occurred when people fleeing the rising flood waters were
washed away, relief officials said. Some victims succumbed to
diarrhea from drinking contaminated water, others were bitten
by snakes.
Many of the
survivors were hungry and desperate. In one town, police had to
fire in the air to disperse people who were stealing food and
other relief materials from a railway station.
The army was
helping supply food and water to the worst-hit districts in Bihar,
as complaints poured in about inadequate supplies of food, fuel
and plastic sheets needed to put up temporary shelters, district
officials said.
But relief
and rescue operations were hampered by Bihar Chief Minister Rabri
Devi's announcement that $1,100 would be given to families of
those who died in the floods, an official said on condition of
anonymity. People scuffled with each other to list the names of
their dead family members, and one person was shot and killed
Sunday in the fighting.
In Bangladesh,
at least 15 people have died in the flooding, authorities said.
Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina ordered the army and paramilitary troops to join
relief and rescue work after swirling flood waters damaged or
washed away about 40,000 mud-and-straw huts, leaving at least
200,000 people homeless.
While soldiers
and relief workers struggled to reach the tens of thousands of
people marooned in their submerged villages, many people used
boats or waded through water to reach high ground.
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