Three men were swept away by flood waters in the same northern province of Chiang Rai on Friday where two were killed earlier this week after days of torrential rains.

A 78-year-old woman was also electrocuted in Sukhotai province on Saturday when she tried to plug in a rice cooker at her flooded home, according to a television report.

Heavy downpours during Thailand's monsoon season in the country's north and northeast have left 14 of the country's 76 provinces under water, the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department said.

Officials said 104,000 people have been affected, either left homeless, stranded or unable to work because of the high waters. Schools have been closed, houses left underwater and fields flooded.

Bangkok officials have set up a flood operations centre amid concern that parts of the nation's capital could also be submerged by the deluge.

Forecasters have predicted some of the heaviest rainfall for Thailand in recorded history with flooding already having affected more than half a million people in the kingdom during the past few months.

Adverse weather conditions have caused widespread flooding in much of East and South Asia since June with Bangladesh, where hundreds died, China, India, Japan, both Koreas, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam among the worst hit.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported last month that a combination of factors including abnormal monsoons and tropical cyclones were behind the problems.

The United Nations' disaster reduction agency said on Friday that more than 254 million people worldwide were affected by natural hazards last year, a near three-fold jump from 1990.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.