Floods, Landslides Kill 144 Across South Asia

Unseasonable heavy downpours have triggered landslides and submerged large areas in northeastern India, Bangladesh and Nepal in the last three days, leaving at least 144 people dead, authorities said Saturday.

In India, the death toll rose to 100 after rescue workers recovered the bodies of 61 people who had been swept away by flash floods in the remote Goalpara district in Assam state, officials said.

In the northern parts of neighboring Bangladesh, tornadoes and heavy rains have killed 39 people and injured hundreds. Five people died in landslides in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal.

The deaths brought to 2,283 this year’s toll of those killed by rains, floods and flood-related diseases in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Most of the casualties occurred during the monsoon season, from June to September.

In Goalpara district, flash floods in the last three days have inundated at least 182 villages, mostly along the Himalayan foothills, said Deepak Kumar Goswami, the district’s top administrator.

Water gushing down the hills has flattened hundreds of mud-and-thatch houses, sweeping away people as they were sleeping, Goswami said.

“The possibility of finding more bodies is very high,” he said. “Soldiers and local people found bodies almost everywhere, inside flattened houses and in the adjoining paddy fields. It’s a devastation that the locals have not seen in years.”

In neighboring West Bengal state, the rains caused houses to collapse, Hafiz Alam Sairani, the state’s relief minister, said Saturday.

Hundreds of huts have been flattened by rainstorms that have battered the coastal state since Thursday and more than 50,000 people were sheltering in schools and government buildings, he said.