Flooding death toll in South Asia nears 880

PATNA, India -- Heavy rains washing down from the foothills of the Himalayas swelled rivers in eastern India, worsening monsoon flooding that has killed at least 874 people in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, officials said Tuesday.

New flooding was reporting in northern regions of India's Bihar state and the Kosi River was flowing higher than normal, the Special Relief Commissioner Sambhu Sarab Singh told reporters.

He said the death toll in the state, located between Nepal and Bangladesh, had climbed to 265 people in flooding that began across the region in June.

Thirty people have died in neighboring Assam state.

Floods have displaced or trapped more than 15 million people in the two states, home to some 100 million people.

While the incessant rains are the worst in four years, large parts of India are facing the worst drought in 14 years. Hundreds of districts in northern and western India, where farmers have lost most of their summer crop, sown in June and July, have been declared drought-hit.

In Nepal, which has seen the most deaths in the monsoon flooding, aid agencies appealed for help for thousands of people in Nepal left homeless by flooding and landslides.

As many as 422 people have been killed and 250,000 more injured in the flooding, officials said Monday.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies asked international donors for $1.7 million in immediate aid for flood and landslide victims.

"The local Red Cross has almost exhausted its stock of relief materials," Tamara al-Rifai, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in Katmandu, Nepal's capital.

Most of the landslides occurred in remote mountainous areas that have been cut off because of washed-out roads.