Severe storms and floods sweeping Asia this week have killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands across large swathes of the continent, with more storms forecast.
Record monsoon rain and the onslaught of Tropical Storm Fanapi wreaked devastation from South Korea to India, triggering landslides, washing away thousands of homes and tearing through roads and railways.
Eighteen people have died and 44 are missing after Fanapi churned through southern China, while 65 people were killed in monsoon rain in India and 100Â 000 displaced after a lake burst in southern Pakistan.
Fanapi made landfall on mainland China on Monday, one day after slamming Taiwan with heavy rain, killing two people and leaving more than 100 injured on the island.
All of China’s deaths occurred in the southern province of Guangdong, which saw its worst rain in a century, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.
Five died after a dam burst while two were killed when their house collapsed, the report said. Of the missing, 25 disappeared in a rain-triggered mudslide, the report said.
More than 83Â 000 people in Guangdong have been evacuated due to the storm, which destroyed about 2Â 000 homes and damaged 7Â 000 others.
Initial direct economic losses amounted to 867-million yuan ($129-million), it said.
Fanapi was moving west at up to 10km/h, bringing torrential rain in its wake, meteorologists said.
Thousands of homes flooded
At its strongest point, when it hit Taiwan on Sunday, Fanapi was packing winds of up to 220km/h and dumped up to 1Â 000 millimetres of rain in the south of the island.
Two people were killed in the storm, which caused damage estimated at around five billion Taiwan dollars ($158-million), officials said.
Two people went missing and thousands of homes flooded when a record rainstorm hit parts of South Korea during a national holiday, the disaster control agency said on Wednesday.
The storm on Tuesday — the start of the three-day Chuseok harvest festival — dumped almost 300 millimetres of rain on parts of Seoul, an all-time high for late September since records began in 1907.
The National Emergency Management Agency said about 11Â 800 people were briefly made homeless by the deluge, which flooded roads and subway lines.
It said two fishermen were missing in the north-eastern province of Gangwon and were feared to have been swept away when a river swelled.
In northern India at least 65 people have died after heavy monsoon rains triggered landslides and flooding.
The mountainous northern state of Uttarakhand was worst affected, with 65 people killed over three days, regional civilian administrator Subhash Kumar said on Monday.
Elsewhere, in the impoverished northern state of Bihar, the river Gandhak burst its banks and displaced thousands of people, destroying paddy crops and houses.
“Floods have left thousands of people, mostly the poorest of the poor, homeless in the last 48 hours,” one local district magistrate told Agence France-Presse over the telephone.
‘Wettest monsoon in more than three decades’
In New Delhi, where workers are rushing to finish delayed construction work ahead of the start of the Commonwealth Games on October 3, a newspaper report said the city had experienced its wettest monsoon in more than three decades.
About 100Â 000 more people have been displaced after a lake burst in southern Pakistan where massive floods have already affected millions of people, a UN spokesperson said Tuesday.
The Manchar lake in southern Sindh province overflowed on Friday, forcing people living in the area to seek refuge elsewhere, UN spokesperson Maurizio Giuliano told AFP.
“More than a hundred thousand [have] been displaced. Not only houses, but boats were also found in pieces, crops are completely washed away,” Giuliano said.
About 21-million people have been affected by floods that have ravaged Pakistan, according to UN figures, including 12-million who need emergency food aid. — AFP