ISLAMABAD: At least 47 people have been dead after torrential rains caused severe flooding across Myanmar, with floodwaters hampering efforts to rescue thousands stranded in shelters, government officials have said.
In India’s Manipur state, at least 20 people were killed in a landslide triggered by incessant rain in Chandel district.
We need drinking water urgently. Our road communication is cut,” Khin Zaw Win, a resident in Minbyar, a town in northern Rakhine, said.
Heavy monsoon rain has battered vast swathes of the country in recent weeks and on the government declared the four worst-hit areas in central and western Myanmar as “national disaster affected regions”, indicating the severity of the damage.
Around 150,000 homes and fields have been decimated, leaving people stranded in remote villages and destroying their livelihoods in a disaster testing the government’s limited relief operations.
A United Nations envoy for Myanmar expressed serious concern over the flooding in a statement, saying assessment teams had been dispatched to the worst-hit areas to identify immediate relief priorities.
