Floods Kill 700 In South Asia

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.