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DEVASTATING FLOODS HIT INDIA,
BANGLADESH AND NEPAL
WORST FLOODS IN
LIVING MEMORY
5 Aug 2007.
Almost 25
million people have been displaced as some of the worst floods for years have
hit a wide swathe of northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
It has been raining heavily in
the region for three weeks. Some rivers have seen their levels rise nine or 10
metres. Hundreds of thousands of people across the affected area are at risk
from hunger and disease.
A third of neighbouring Bangladesh is inundated, with nearly 40
people killed and some five million affected by the floods, the authorities say.
In Bangladesh, a country that is predominantly low-lying, hundreds of thousands
of people are camping on embankments or on the roofs of their homes waiting for
relief.
An estimated 70,000 homes have been submerged or washed away in
Bihar.
In Nepal, several rivers that flow down from the Himalayas have
burst their banks in the heavily populated and low-lying Terai region that
borders Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Floods occur in southern Nepal every year, our
correspondent adds, but the ferocity of these ones have taken everyone by
surprise.
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