1.5 Million Displaced, 17 Dead In India/Bangladesh Floods - Reuters

[hatrack]

GUWAHATI, India - Floods and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains have left more than 1.5 million people in northeast India and neighbouring Bangladesh marooned or homeless, and killed at least 17, officials said on Friday.

Officials on the Indian side said 12 people had been killed so far and almost half-a-million affected by the floods, with scores of villages in the state of Assam inundated by overflowing rivers, forcing residents to higher grounds. "People have started moving to high lands because their houses are now knee-deep under water," Gautom Ganguly, an Assam government official said.

A 12-year-old boy drowned in flood waters and a woman died when a wooden boat carrying a group of people to safety capsized in southern Assam on Thursday, police said. Earlier this week, 10 people died in western Assam and the neighbouring state of Tripura.

Roads and railway networks have also been disrupted in many places as gushing waters washed away bridges and rail tracks damaged by landslides, officials said. In Bangladesh, about 10,000 people had been made homeless and a million others were marooned as floods spread in four northeastern districts over the last five days, officials said.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36879/story.htm

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I'm afraid that this may be the future for all our coastal areas in

major storm belts.

[demosincebirth]

2. Its seems that this happens every year in

NE India and Bangladesh. I don't know what can be done about this aside from moving millions of people out of the those flood plains.