India battled Monday to reach at least half a million people stranded by floods without food or drinking water, as the military poured fresh troops into the country's devastated north. Two weeks after the monsoon-swollen Kosi river from Nepal breached flood defences and changed course to cut across the Indian state of Bihar, emergency workers were still struggling with the scale of the disaster.
Tens of thousands of survivors have packed overcrowded relief camps, where tensions are growing over inadequate emergency supplies. More than half a million people have been evacuated from the disaster zone, with at least another 500,000 still without food or water, disaster management official Prataya Amrit told AFP.
The army said it was sending thousands more troops as well as helicopters and boats to the state, which is one of India's poorest areas. Around 80 people are confirmed to have died in the flooding, said officials in Patna, the state capital of Bihar, but the real toll is expected to be much higher with many victims simply washed away. In the town of Madhepura, 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of Patna, and one of the worst-hit areas, most land was under at least a metre (three feet) of water.
An AFP correspondent managed to reach the area by tractor. In the town, local resident Susheela Shah, 74, said she had lost everything. Officials in the town said that 10,000 of the town's 70,000 population, however, were staying put, although more mass population movements were expected. They said it could be months - well after the monsoon ends towards the end of September - before the river returns to its normal course and water finally recedes.
Trucks unloaded exhausted villagers recently rescued from outlying villages, while the homeless waded through streets carrying the few bundles of clothes they had saved from the rising water. Food, shelter and medical care were in short supply in the overcrowded relief camps set on high ground, survivors said. Aid workers said they were already fearing the outbreak of disease.
In Nepal, where the Kosi river first broke its banks on August 18 and flooded down a channel it had previously abandoned, authorities said they were working around the clock to fix the breach.