Flood death toll in India tops 1,100

New Delhi, August 5:

The death toll from floods sweeping across India topped 1,100 today as more people drowned in swollen rivers that have stranded millions with little food or drinking water, officials said.

Six people died overnight in Uttar Pradesh, taking the death toll to 125 in the northern state where 2,400 villages have been cut off, a government spokesman said.

“Almost all rivers are flowing above the danger mark but what worries us is the discharge of a large amount of water from nearby Nepal,” relief department spokesman Shreesh Dubey said in the state capital Lucknow.

The death toll in the worst-hit state of Bihar rose to 91 as 11 more people drowned, local disaster management chief Manoj Srivastava said by telephone from the capital Patna.

The latest figures took to at least 1,120 the number of people killed nationwide in the annual monsoon rains.

Deaths were also reported in the states of West Bengal and Assam. Sonia Gandhi, chief of India’s ruling Congress party announced she would make an aerial survey of some marooned areas on Tuesday. Bihar reeled under the havoc of the floods as rivers burst their banks today and inundated scores more villages and raised the risk of an outbreak of water-borne diseases.

About 10.8 million people are marooned in their homes in Bihar.