Mobs attack relief-teams, police in flood-hit Bengal

Mobs attack relief-teams, police in flood-hit Bengal
REUTERS

CALCUTTA, SEPT 25: Hungry mobs in the marooned villages of Bengal, where flooding has left at least 208 people dead and 165 missing, attacked relief-teams and troops on boats on Monday.

``People were fighting with each other and attacking our men to make sure they got a place in the rescue-boats,'' a senior army official said.

The boats can carry 25 people at a time, while hundreds are stranded on roof-tops and in trees.

A railway spokesman said several trains carrying relief material for flood victims had been looted.

Police fired shots in the air to disperse an angry mob in Nadia, 150 km (95 miles) north of Calcutta, which had clashed with other police carrying food for flood victims.

In the worst-hit district of Murshidabad, 100 km (60 miles) further north, air-force helicopters dropped food packets for marooned villagers, officials said. Relief officials are scheduled to meet later on Monday to discuss the situation.

In West Bengal, as many as 800,000 houses have been washed over by flood waters causing about Rs 300 crore of damage, a government official said on Sunday.

The flooding, triggered by heavy annual monsoon rains, took a dramatic turn for the worse last week when sluice-gates of three major rivers were opened to prevent dams from bursting.

Torrential rains also lashed neighbouring Bihar, where monsoon floods have killed 86 people in the past two months.

Although river-waters subsided in August, fresh downpours over the past six days have submerged large parts of the state.

Officials said many major rivers in the state such as the Ganga, Punpun, Sone and Phalgu were at dangerous levels. Fresh floods also crippled Bihar's train services as vast stretches of the state's railway tracks were either uprooted or flooded.

Hundreds of flood victims along with their cattle and poultry have taken shelter in stranded trains, some setting up makeshift kitchens inside the coaches. ``We had no place to stay and wandered for three days in search of a safe place,'' said one man as his wife cooked rice over a kerosene burner in a train.