Relief efforts pick up as flooding eases in India, Bangladesh

BARABANKI, India -- Seasonal flooding eased Sunday after driving millions of South Asians from their homes and killing at least 289 people in the past week, officials said Sunday.

Major rivers were receding in the worst-hit districts in India after a day without rain, and doctors and paramedics started handing out medicines to prevent diarrhea and other waterborne diseases, said S.K. Gupta, an Indian army officer who is commanding a unit involved in relief operations.

"Our effort is to prevent the outbreak of an epidemic," he said.

Major rivers have also started receding in worst-hit eastern and central Bangladesh with the weakening of monsoon rain, the country's Flood Forecasting and Warning Center said.

Helicopters continued to drop food and emergency supplies to stranded people in India, where the army helped civil authorities carry out rescue operations. Flour, salt, candles and match boxes were being airlifted in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, where hundreds of thousands of people escaped to high ground near national highways and railway tracks last week.

At least 39 deaths were reported in Bangladesh and 21 in India over the weekend, raising Bangladesh's overall death toll to 120 and India's to 169, according to government figures.

Since the start of the monsoon in June, the government says more than 1,200 people have died in India alone, with scores of others killed in Bangladesh and neighboring Nepal, where floods have hit low-lying southern parts of the country.

So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced by flooding, according to government figures.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as rains work their way across the subcontinent, spawning floods and landslides across the region and killing hundreds of people every year.

Flooding has affected much of Bangladesh, a delta nation of more than 150 million people.

Fakhruddin Ahmed, head of Bangladesh's military-backed interim government, said on a trip to the northwestern district of Sirajganj on Saturday that despite the devastation the government had enough food and medicine and foreign assistance wasn't yet needed.