Heavy rains continue to lash South Asia ( 2003-07-30 11:26) (Agencies)
Monsoon rains triggered landslides, snapped electricity cables and inundated
a wide swath of South Asia, pushing the region's death toll from this year's
rainy season past 750, officials said Tuesday.
Vehicles drive through a flooded street after monsoon
rains in Karachi July 29, 2003. Sweeping floods caused by heavy monsoon
have killed at least 88 and stranded more than a 100,000 people in
southern Sind province in Pakistan, government officials and rescue
workers said on Tuesday. [Reuters]
The
heaviest one-day downpour in a quarter-century pummeled Pakistan's southern port
city of Karachi with 4 inches of rain Monday, leaving 14 people dead, said Arif
Mahmood, an official in the state-run meteorological department.
A landslide smashed a home in Nepal and crushed five children to death on
Sunday. Their parents survived the slide in Aglung village, about 190 miles west
of Katmandu.
The combined death toll for South Asia stood at 756 on Tuesday after more
than a month of monsoon rains. India has reported 333 deaths, Bangladesh 175,
Pakistan 164, and Nepal 84.
The death toll more than doubled to 27 in India's eastern state of Bihar on
Tuesday, despite receding floodwaters and easing rain. Rescue officials used the
letup to move mobile clinics into areas that had been cut off.
Several recent victims in Bihar died after being bitten by snakes washed out
of their holes, the state's minister for relief and rehabilitation, Ramvichar
Rai, said Tuesday.
He said rice and corn crops worth $2.1 million had been washed away and that
1.9 million people in Bihar had been affected by the flooding.
This year's rains have been particularly heavy in India, drenching even the
normally parched western part of the country. Some officials have said they fear
India's death toll might top last year's figure of 1,000 by the time the rains
stop, probably in late August or September.
Among the 14 latest victims in Pakistan were four children who drowned in a
rain-swollen stream, and three others electrocuted when winds toppled power
lines, said Mohammed Amir, a spokesman for the emergency relief group Edhi
Foundation. Troops have been called in to rescue thousands of people marooned by
floods in the country's south.
Rescue workers in southern Pakistan's Badin area moved about 37,000 people to
makeshift relief camps, provincial government relief Mohammed Ahsan said
Tuesday.
An emergency was declared in Badin and two other districts, and the
provincial government set up a relief fund of $800,000 to help thousands of
villagers made homeless by the flooding.
The federal government donated another $800,000, Pakistan's state
television reported Tuesday.
The floods have washed away thousands of homes and crops, including rice
paddies and cotton fields in Pakistan's Sindh province, where both Karachi and
Badin are located. Officials and cotton traders said Tuesday the floods could
cut the province's production of cotton, one of Pakistan's main export items.
The Greek-registered tanker MT Tasman Spirit ran aground Sunday off the
coast of Karachi due to the rains and high monsoon winds. Port operations
weren't affected and there was no major oil spill.
