South Asia Flood Victims Hit by Disease

Police control the queue as Bangladeshi flood victims wait for relief materials in Manikgonj, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Bangladesh capital Dhaka, Tuesday, Aug 7, 2007. Aid workers scrambled to get food, water and medicine to the millions marooned in flood-hit South Asia following an outbreak of diarrhea and other waterborne disease in northern India, officials said Tuesday. At least 368 people have died in recent flooding in India and Bangladesh in annual monsoon rains. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman) (Pavel Rahman - AP)

Hungry flood victims fought each other for scarce food supplies as helicopters dropped more than 4,300 food packets Monday in Bihar, India's worst-hit state, said Manoj Shrivastav, the state disaster management secretary.

Authorities have been criticized for being too slow to respond to the crisis with too little aid.

At the weekend, a teenager fell from the roof of his home and was drowned in floodwaters after trying to grab an aid packet dropped by a helicopter, officials said.

Hundreds of angry villagers in the Darbhanga district of Bihar briefly kidnapped a senior official and the local police chief, only releasing them after receiving promises that an aid distribution center would be set up there, said Upendera Sharma, a local government official.

Others complained that little was being done to help them as they tried to return to their ruined homes.

"I need money to rebuild my home," said Kedar Nisar, who makes a meager salary ferrying people across a river in his row boat.

Nisar said he and his family had received only 22 pounds of rice from the Uttar Pradesh state government in the past week.

Since the start of the monsoon in June, the government says more than 1,200 people have died in India alone, with scores of others killed in Bangladesh and neighboring Nepal, where floods have hit low-lying southern parts of the country.

So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced by flooding, according to government figures.

Officials have blamed the flooding on an unusual monsoon pattern.

Eight more people died in the latest flooding, bringing Bangladesh's toll to 164 Tuesday, the Information Ministry said.

The Flood Forecasting and Warning Center said flooding had eased in northern and eastern areas, but swollen rivers flowing south to the Bay of Bengal threatened to flood new areas in central Bangladesh, including the region around the capital, Dhaka.

Floods have hit more than 9 million people in 39 of Bangladesh's 64 districts, submerging vast areas of cropland and damaging thousands of miles of roads and mud embankments in the populous, impoverished delta nation of more than 150 million people.