Bengal flood waters recede, but more dead found

Bengal flood waters recede, but more dead found
REUTERS

CALCUTTA, OCT 2: Rivers in West Bengal receded further on Monday, but officials said ebbing waters revealed more corpses and took the death toll from the worst floods in 22 years to 860 people.

"We are removing dead bodies on a war footing. Many thousands of cattle have died and as the water recedes, more will be discovered," District Magistrate Vivek Kumar said by telephone from the worst-hit areas around Murshidabad, 250 km (155 miles) north of Calcutta.

Around Murshidabad alone he said 462 people had died and thousands of cattle had perished.

Although rivers were receding rapidly, about 40 villages were still flooded and vast areas remained cut off, he added.

Floods across West Bengal over the last two weeks had also swept away 200 people, most of whom are believed dead, state government officials said.

They said around 100 more corpses were found on today.

Torrential monsoon rains and heavy flows in the Ganges and 56 other rivers sweeping into Bangladesh from India have affected more than 17 million people in each country, destroyed paddy fields and damaged roads and railway tracks.

Media reports said floods had already killed more than 100 people in Bangladesh.

Kumar said relief supplies, including 1,200 tonnes of wheat and rice, had been sent to thousands of marooned villages, many of which had received power for the first time in two weeks.

He said it would take nearly two weeks to repair a damaged bridge on the highway that connects the river Port of Calcutta to landlocked Nepal, Bhutan and northeastern India.

Government officials also said flood waters were receding in the state's North 24 Parganas district on the Bangladesh border, which faced its worst deluge in 50 years as water rolled down from upstream areas of the Murshidabad district.

"The water level is falling very slowly here, but not in the low-lying areas," said a district official at Bongaon on the Bangladesh border.

Officials and relief agencies in the flood-hit districts said they were giving health a top priority.

"We are being very, very strict about post-flood operations. We are disinfecting 4,000 tubewells a day. We have already disinfected 9,000 of the 15,000 tubewells in the Murshidabad," Kumar said.

About 20 deaths from water-borne diseases had been reported from different parts of the state, a relief department official said. "But there are no epidemics," he added.

Fernando Soares, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the agency was stepping up relief activities and focusing on health and shelter.

He said it was sending 10 medical packages, each of which covered the medical needs for 10,000 people for three months, to the region.