The death toll in the worst-hit state of Bihar rose to 91 as 11 more people drowned, local disaster management chief Manoj Srivastava said by telephone from the capital Patna.

The latest figures took to at least 1,120 the number of people killed nationwide in the annual monsoon rains that have swollen major rivers, including the Ganges.

Deaths were also reported in the states of West Bengal and Assam which borders Bangladesh as the annual monsoon rains, vital for the farm-dependent economies, combined with Himalayan snow melt to trigger the deluge.

With the flood situation still grim, Sonia Gandhi, chief of India's ruling Congress party announced she would make an aerial survey of some marooned areas on Tuesday, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.

Bihar reeled under the havoc of the floods as rivers burst their banks Sunday and inundated scores more villages and raised the risk of an outbreak of water-borne diseases.

About 10.8 million people are marooned in their homes in Bihar.

The air force stepped up relief operations across the state of 120 million, where floods have destroyed nearly 70,000 houses.

A flood control room official said dozens of rivers continued to rise in Bihar.

Flooding has destroyed crops planted over 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of land with estimated losses of 930 million rupees (22 million dollars) in the state, PTI said.

Bihar's chief minister Nitish Kumar said he was deploying his senior cabinet colleagues in the flood-hit districts to speed up rescue and relief operations.

"They will camp in areas assigned to them to supervise relief operations until the situation normalises," Kumar said.

Meanwhile in the northeastern state of Assam people were returning to their homes in 26 of the state's 27 districts which were hit by the floods.

"There have been no reports of fresh flooding since Friday although thousands of people are still taking shelter in makeshift camps with their villages filled with mud and slush," Assam revenue, relief and rehabilitation minister Bhumidhar Barman told AFP.

"More than 70 percent of the 5.5 million people displaced in the state have since returned to their homes with an overall improvement in the flood situation," Barman said.

According to a Central Water Commission bulletin, the Brahmaputra River had receded below the danger mark.

The 2,906-kilometre (1,816-mile) river -- one of the longest in Asia -- traverses Tibet, India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

Every year the monsoon causes the river to flood in Assam, a remote state of 26 million people.

earlier related report
Relief Efforts Continue As Monsoon Eases In Nepal
Kathmandu (AFP) Aug 5 - Flood-displaced people have started to return home as monsoon rains eased in Nepal where landslides and floods have killed at least 91 people since the start of the season in June, officials said Sunday. "People have started returning to their villages but relief programmes are continuing," home ministry official Ishwar Regmi told AFP. Some 270,000 people have been affected by this year's monsoon, mostly in Nepal's southern plains area bordering India. Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula flew to the area Sunday morning to inspect the relief camps.

"At least 91 people have been killed so far this monsoon, and we are expecting to get more information about casualties from various districts by this evening," said Regmi.

The incessant rainfall that triggered the deadly flooding and landslides is abating, meteorologists said.

"The rainfall is in limited pockets only. In the overall context of Nepal, subdued or decreasing rainfall activities are noted in the country," senior state meteorologist Krishna Bhakta Manadhar told AFP.

"This condition is likely to persist for the next couple of days with a few afternoon or night thunder showers," he said.

A range of national and international aid organisations are assisting in relief efforts, as well as the Nepal Army and police.

The United Nations World Food Programme has started a mission to feed about 60,000 people for the next three months in the worst hit areas. The government has announced that families whose homes have been destroyed will receive 380 dollars in state cash.

earlier related report
Officials Warn Aid Too Slow For South Asia Flood Victims
Patna (AFP) India, Aug 5 - Helicopters on Sunday dropped food and other essentials to the millions of people forced from their homes by floods across South Asia, but officials warned that the aid efforts were insufficient. The floods, triggered by unrelenting monsoon rains and glacial snow melt from the Himalayas, have inundated large swathes of India, Bangladesh and Nepal, leaving some 20 million people homeless or marooned.

At least 1,400 people have died since June in the worst flooding to hit the region in decades. The Ganges, the Brahmaputra and dozens of other rivers have burst their banks, submerging thousands of villages.

In India's worst-hit state of Bihar alone, 11 million people -- nearly 10 percent of the state's 120-million-strong population -- have been affected by the disaster, leading aid officials to make a desperate plea for help.

"We have to do much more than what is being done," Job Zachariah, head of the hard-pressed Bihar chapter of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told AFP as he coordinated relief efforts in the area.

"Two million are living on open embankments," he said.

Four helicopters dropped 11,000 emergency packets -- each weighing five kilos (11 pounds) and packed with dry rations, candles, plastic sheets and match boxes -- to those in need in Bihar, the Indian air force said.

But Zachariah warned: "It is just not sufficient. There is a need for a massive airlift to help people in 19 of Bihar's 38 districts."

State chief minister Nitish Kumar said he was deploying his senior aides to the worst-hit districts to speed up rescue and relief operations, as officials warned that water levels were still on the rise.

State monitoring teams meanwhile headed to India's border with Nepal to keep an close eye on water rushing down from the Himalayas into Bihar and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state.

"If the discharges continue on this scale for another week, we could have a natural calamity unheard in the region's history," warned one senior official, who asked not to be named.

In Bihar's worst-hit district of Darbhanga, 5,000 desperate people stormed a former palace in search of food and much-needed shelter, aid workers said.

"Here we will not die of snake bites, diseases and hunger," said Akhilesh Yadav, a victim sheltering in the complex that is now an university campus.

In the village of Rajkhand Katonjha, hundreds sheltered on rooftops as the Bagmati River submerged their mud-thatched homes.

"We're offering prayers for dead as we don't know what will happen to us," said resident Sudhir Prasad, as children lay listlessly nearby in their own waste with no medical help.

More than 90 people have died in Bihar in the past two weeks while in Uttar Pradesh, 125 have lost their lives. A government spokesman in that state said 2,400 villages had been cut off.

Some good news however emerged in northeastern Assam state, where people began to return to their homes in all but one district as rains eased off.

In Bangladesh, at least 39 more fatalities were reported overnight, mostly children who drowned in the swirling waters, raising the overall toll to 120, government spokesman Shachindranath Halder said.

Some eight million people have been displaced in the severe flooding. Nearly 100,000 mud-built or tin-roofed houses have been completely destroyed, with the residents forced to live at government shelters, Halder said.

Water levels in the Brahmaputra and the Meghna rivers had significantly dropped by Sunday in the worst affected northern districts, the country's flood centre said, but the Padma -- called the Ganges in India -- was still rising.

In Nepal, where some 270,000 people have been affected by the floods, mostly in the southern plains bordering India, residents slowly began returning home as monsoon rains began to ease.

Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula flew to the area early Sunday to inspect relief camps.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
When the Earth Quakes
A world of storm and tempest

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News