PATNA: Flood waters have inundated scores of villages in India’s east, leaving nearly 40,000 people homeless, an official said today.

Several days of incessant rain caused the Bhagmati river to breach its embankment on

Saturday, flooding three districts of Bihar state, said SM Raju, a local government official in the affected districts of Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga.

The flood waters sloshed through the homes of more than

one lakh people and forced 40,000 of them to seek shelter on higher ground. Work to plug a gap in the embankment was under way.