Flood Havoc

NEW DELHI, Aug 5, 2007 (AFP) - The death toll from raging floods in India neared 1,100 Sunday as more people drowned in swollen rivers that have stranded millions in their homes, officials said.





Every year the monsoon causes the river to flood in Assam, a remote state of 26 million people. Four people died overnight in Uttar Pradesh, taking the death toll to 123 in the northern state where 2,400 villages have been cut off by the floods, a government spokesman said.

"Almost all rivers are flowing above the danger mark but what worries us is the discharge of a large amount of water from nearby Nepal," relief department spokesman Shreesh Dubey said in the state capital Lucknow.

The death toll in the worst-hit state of Bihar rose to 87 as seven more people drowned Saturday in the stricken region, local disaster management chief Manoj Srivastava said by telephone from the capital Patna.

The latest figures took to at least 1,039 the number of people killed nationwide in the annual monsoon rains.

Deaths were also reported in the states of West Bengal and Assam, which borders Bangladesh.

Bihar reeled under the havoc of the floods as rivers burst their banks Sunday and inundated