By IRNA
Guwahati : Heavy rains triggered more flooding in India’s northeastern state of Assam with thousands of more people marooned overnight, leaving an estimated five million displaced, officials said Wednesday.
“The overall situation has turned critical with two more people drowned in separate incidents and a couple of major breaches of embankments inundating dozens of villages”, Bhumidhar Barman, Assam revenue, relief and rehabilitation minister, said.
The breach of a mud embankment late Wednesday near Narayanguri in the western Baska district, about 90 km from Assam’s main city of Guwahati, has submerged close to 50 villages displacing more than 100,000 people.
The total number of people now stranded by the flooding in Assam stands at more than five million.
The latest deaths brought to 27 the number of people killed in flood-related accidents in the past week in Assam and adjoining Meghalaya with heavy monsoon rains swelling the major Brahmaputra River.
A Central Water Commission bulletin Wednesday said all major rivers and their tributaries in Assam are flowing above the danger mark and in full spate.
The Regional Meteorological Centre here warned of more rains and thundershowers in the next 24 hours.
Twenty-five of Assam’s 27 districts are now hit by the floods affecting a total land area of nearly 600,000 hectares, a government statement said.
“With heavy rains lashing across Assam, the flood situation has turned devastating with reports of fresh areas coming under flood waters”, the minister said.
The state government has opened more than 3,500 temporary shelters, besides lodging flood-hit people in schools and office buildings.
“Rescue and relief workers have been working on a war footing. We have been trying our best to reach essentials, baby food, medicines, besides tarpaulin and polythene sheets, to the people”, Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi said.
Army soldiers are already out in many parts of western and northern Assam and engaged in rescue operations, while the Indian Air Force have been kept on standby for airdropping food in certain worst hit areas.
The 2,906 km long Brahmaputra is one of Asia’s largest rivers that traverse its first stretch of 1,625 km in China’s Tibet region, the next 918 km in India and the remaining 363 km through neighbouring Bangladesh before converging into the Bay of Bengal.
Every year the floods leave a trail of destruction, washing away villages, submerging paddy fields, drowning livestock, besides causing loss of human life and property, in the remote state of 26 million.
The monsoon was scattered in Assam last year thereby sparing millions of people from the ravaging floods.
In 2004, at least 200 people died and more than 12 million displaced in the floods.