By Biswajyoti Das
GUWAHATI, India, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Heavy rain triggered by storms caused fresh flooding in India and Bangladesh on Sunday, as authorities battled bad weather to supply food and medicines to victims of some of the worst floods in South Asia in years.
Thousands of people have been marooned over the last two days across densely populated India's east and northeast and neighbouring Bangladesh after rivers, swollen by days of heavy monsoon rain, broke through mud embankments, swamped villages and destroyed crops.
Around 1,000 people have died, mostly due to drowning or house collapses but also because of snakebite and diarrhoea, in the region and hundreds of thousands are still homeless in the latest flooding, which began about a month ago.
Fresh flooding over the weekend brought misery to another 100,000 people in India's northeastern state of Assam, who were displaced after their houses were inundated, officials said.
Traffic on a main highway in the state's Barpeta district was stopped and people evacuated after two children drowned overnight in the area, they said.
"Water flowing down from Bhutan has caused the flash floods and aggravated the flood situation in the state," said Bhumidhar Burman, the oil-rich state's relief and rehabilitation minister.
In the neighbouring state of West Bengal, rivers swollen by heavy rain for a fifth day, burst embankments and flooded dozens of villages in four districts.
At least five people drowned overnight in separate areas of the state and several streets in the capital city of Kolkata were still flooded.
"Filthy water has seeped into water pipes and flooded our area," said Roopesh Chatterjee, a resident.
DIARRHOEA OUTBREAK
In the mineral-rich state of Orissa, around 5,000 people were marooned after fresh floods triggered by a coastal storm swamped villages in six districts.
Thousands were suffering from water-borne diseases in the neighbouring state of Bihar, where widespread flooding has claimed 321 lives so far.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, the death toll from floods rose to 564 with 10 drowning deaths reported overnight, the health ministry said.
More than half of the low-lying and densely populated nation of 140 million people is covered by flood waters, and thousands of people are suffering from diarrhoea in flood-hit areas, officials said.
Health workers were struggling to contain diarrhoeal attacks, which had so far infected about 61,000 people, 3,000 of them since Saturday, officials said.
Monsoon rains are an annual phenomenon in South Asia. Though they often bring death and destruction, they are vital for food productivity and overall economic growth. (Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar in Kolkata and Serajul Islam Quadir in Dhaka, Bangladesh)
