Monsoon Floods Displace Millions in India

• 09.30.2019, 12:08
•  Asia,  World,  No-politics

More than three million people have been displaced across north and north-eastern India amid monsoon rain that has cost lives and destroyed homes, BBC reports.

Storms and floods have ripped through areas of Nepal, Bangladesh and India, killing more than 130 people.

At least 67 people lost their lives in Nepal in torrential rains, police there said on Monday.

Thirty people were reported missing while 38 were injured, Nepalese police added.

Heavy rains also caused deaths in Bangladesh, including in overcrowded Rohingya refugee camps. More bad weather is expected in the coming days.

The Brahmaputra River, which flows through India, Bangladesh and China, burst its banks, swamping more than 1,800 villages in India's north-east Assam state, Reuters reported on Monday.

Almost 2 million have been displaced in the northern Indian state of Bihar due to rising flood waters, the government said. More than 1.7 million people in Assam fled their homes.

At least 29 people died in Bangladesh in the past week, including 18 hit by lightning and seven who drowned when their boat sank in the Bay of Bengal.

Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh - where more than a million Rohingya refugees are encamped after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar - has been hit by at least 58.5cm (23 inches) of rain this month, according to the country's meteorological department on Sunday.

Hundreds of landslides since April have killed at least 10 people in the camps, including two Rohingya children in the past week.

The monsoon season lasts from June to September and wreaks havoc across South Asia every year. More than 1,200 people died in the region amid storms and landslides last year, when India's Kerala faced its worst floods in nearly a century.