JUL 26, 2002

GUWAHATI (India) - Monsoon rains lashing South Asia over the past three weeks have triggered flash floods and mudslides that have killed more than 300 people and displaced almost four million, officials and media reports said yesterday.

Nepal, Bangladesh and eastern India have been hit the hardest by the rains, which have been pounding the region again since the weekend following a lull of about a week.

In Nepal, at least 269 have died in floods and landslides which swept through the Himalayan kingdom in the past four days, officials in the affected areas said.

The hardest-hit district was Makwanpur in the south of the kingdom where about 150 people have been killed since Sunday as their villages were swept away by floods, local authorities reached by telephone said.

Home Ministry officials in Kathmandu said 972 families from 19 of Nepal's 75 districts have been affected by flooding and landslides, with the rains expected to rage on throughout the week.

In Bangladesh, more than 2.3 million people have been left stranded or homeless from surging floodwaters since the beginning of the month.

Some 200,000 homes have been submerged in 12 of the country's 64 districts.

At least 19 people died in the flooding, 16 of them from waterborne diseases, the officials said.

They added that fresh monsoon rains have engulfed more villages in several southeastern hill districts since the weekend.

In India, floods have ravaged parts of the eastern states of Bihar and Assam, leaving at least two million people homeless and claiming at least 26 lives.

Residents of Bihar state, where 20 people have died in the floods, have been warned that worse is to come.

'The situation is grim,' state Chief Minister Rabri Devi said after an aerial tour of Bihar, warning the millions of residents in the province to 'be prepared for worse'.

Water Resource Minister Jagdanand Singh described the situation as a 'national calamity' and said the army had been called out to assist in rescue operations.

Heavy flooding and mudslides during the past three weeks in Assam have already snapped road links, submerged up to 2,000 villages and marooned more than 1.7 million people in 14 of the state's 23 districts.

'The situation is indeed very critical with more and more areas being submerged by the high floods,' said Assam's flood control minister Nurzamal Sarkar.

Also in Assam, a national park that is home to the world's largest habitat of one-horned rhino was engulfed by flood waters, forcing the endangered animals to move across a busy highway in search of higher ground.

The tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, meanwhile, has experienced heavy landslides following torrential rains over the weekend.

A Bhutanese Transport Ministry official told AFP from the capital Thimphu that highways had been blocked and traffic disrupted. --AFP, AP

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