By Bappa Majumdar KOLKATA, India, July 3 (Reuters) - Office workers used life boats to cross flooded streets on Tuesday in India's eastern city of Kolkata as monsoon floods and storms ravage parts of South Asia. The death toll in rain-related incidents over the past 11 days approached 700 on Tuesday with more deaths reported from India while the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan saw no improvement. Torrential rains accompanied by strong storms over large parts of India and Pakistan have brought down houses, uprooted trees and disrupted power to hundreds of villages. Floods have swamped cities and huge swathes of agricultural land. In eastern India's biggest city, Kolkata, at least seven people died in roof collapses while train and flight services were disrupted because of flooding of rail tracks and poor visibility. Thousands of people had to wade through filthy brown water to get to work, with buses and cars staying off flooded roads. "HUDDLED IN A BOAT" "I saw a few people, mostly executives, huddled in a small boat making its way through flooded streets," Amal Mukherjee, a city resident, said. Many schools and colleges declared a holiday because of the heavy rains and flooding in the crowded metropolis of eight million people. In western India, 10 people died from roof collapses, lightning and drowning in the coastal state of Gujarat. More than 35,000 people in low-lying areas of the state were moved to higher grounds, officials said. Overnight rains flooded homes in several villages, forcing people to take shelter in trees and on roofs. "We have no place to go, our house has been swept away," said Rekhilal Wankar, a villager. "My house collapsed, I saw all my utensils and clothes flowing away." Officials said they were braced for further flooding in the industrialised state. "Some cities have been put on red alert and the army is helping disaster management teams in rescue operations," Kaushik Patel, a state minister, said, adding food packets and medicines were being distributed. In neighbouring Pakistan, thousands of people in three districts of the usually desert-like Baluchistan province remained cut off, a week after a cyclone brought rains and severe flooding to the region. The cyclone and floods, the worst in Baluchistan since records began nearly a century ago, have affected up to 2 million people and killed nearly 120. "They're really in a vulnerable situation," Baluchistan's deputy relief commissioner, Ali Gul Kurd, said, referring to the marooned districts. "We can't reach there. They're living without any shelter. We may see more deaths there ... There's a desperate need for tents because people are lying in the open air." In Afghanistan, NATO peacekeepers were helping rescue efforts after floods last week killed more than 40 people. (Reporting Rupam Jain Nair in Ahmedabad and Kamran Haider in Islamabad) (Writing by Palash Kumar, editing by Kamil Zaheer; Reuters Messaging: palash.kumar.reuters.com@reuters.net; +91-11-4178-1000))
