South Asia struggles to cope as flood ravage homes

By Hasibur Rahman Bilu

SIRAJGANJ, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Authorities are struggling to respond to flooding in South Asia, which has damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and forced millions to live on embankments and highways.

The monsoon flooding in the densely populated region, which is crisscrossed by large rivers, has affected over 10 million people, many of whom have been marooned in villages for over a week.

In Bangladesh and eastern India, more than 110 people have been killed over the past nine days -- in drownings, snakebites and house collapses -- and authorities, short of boats, said they were overstretched trying to respond.

Some marooned residents have taken to fishing in flood waters to feed their families.

"My two children have survived for the last two days on a single papaya we took from our neighbour before fleeing home", said Sarsatia Devi, a widow living on an embankment with hundreds of others in the Muzaffarpur district of India's eastern state of Bihar.

Across impoverished Bihar and the north-eastern state of Assam, around 5.5 million people have been affected by the flooding.

Tens of thousands of plastic and tarpaulin tents have sprung up in the region, with some of those displaced saying authorities had done little to improve conditions in crowded relief camps.

"There is no one to listen to our woes," Kanak Saikia, whose house was swamped by flood waters, told Reuters over the phone from Dhemaji district in the far east of Assam.