Rescuers in India’s flood-ravaged north-east have recovered a further 37 bodies, taking the death toll in flash floods and landslides in the region to 157 in the past five days, an official said on Sunday.
Thirty bodies were recovered from paddy fields and deserted houses in Assam’s Goalpara district, the area worst affected by the floods, said a rescue official who did not wish to be named.
The bodies of seven others who had drowned in different incidents in adjoining Meghalaya state were recovered by the army, a government official said by telephone from the state capital, Shillong.
Thousands of people were still taking shelter on high-rise embankments and the edges of highways in Assam, witnesses said.
Weather officials said the deluge, the worst in a decade to soak the region outside of a monsoon period, was caused by a depression in the Bay of Bengal, but the skies were expected to clear soon.
Authorities fear the death toll could rise with reports of many more people missing from remote areas.
Scenes of death and devastation were in evidence everywhere in Goalpara’s Bolbola village, 130km west of Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
Vultures, crows and other birds of prey circled above, drawn by the stench of decaying animal carcasses.
An AFP correspondent saw the bodies being piled up in Bolbola village by Indian soldiers called in for rescue operations.
”We were sleeping when flood waters surrounded us in a flash and before I could react I saw my son swept away,” said a distraught Hamid Islam, a farmer from Bolbola.
The body of Islam’s six-year-old son was one of those recovered on Sunday.
”Never in my life have I seen such a devastating flood,” said Binoy Das, a long-time resident of Bolbola.
Vehicles, overturned or swept from the road by strong currents, lay submerged in water, witnesses said.
Twenty-two people died in Goalpara in various incidents of drowning and boat capsizes on Friday and at least 80 people were drowned on Saturday as flash floods and landslides hit the area.
Army helicopters rescued scores of people in the area, many of whom had climbed trees to escape the flash floods.
In other areas, rescue workers used rubber rafts and country boats to reach pockets of isolated and marooned people who had taken refuge on rooftops and any available piece of elevated land.
Officials said nearly 100 000 people had been displaced in the state.
In neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, efforts were under way to locate seven people missing after their boat capsized late on Friday.
Heavy rains have also lashed the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, where 14 people have lost their lives since Thursday.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least 11 were killed and hundreds more injured by a series of tornadoes that ripped through towns and villages on Thursday, officials said. — Sapa-AFP