Floods maroon one million, kill 14 in eastern India

KOLKATA, India - At least one million people were marooned yesterday by flooding in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal after five days of torrential rains left 14 dead, officials said.

Relief workers were using boats to ferry supplies of puffed rice and molasses to hundreds of villages cut off by the floods.

"The flooding has left more than a million people stranded in the state's south. We are reaching relief materials to them," West Bengal village development minister Surya Kanta Mishra said.

At least two rivers in southern Sunderbans region had breached their banks, flooding 60 villages, officials said, and large areas of the paddy-growing state were submerged by muddy flood waters.

They said more than a dozen people had been killed by collapsed walls in houses and electrocution.

The unseasonal rains in largely low-lying West Bengal came after the June-September monsoon season ended in India. Hundreds were killed in flooding and mudslides triggered by rains during the summer which shut down India's financial hub of Mumbai for four days.

In West Bengal, thousands of people sheltered in schools and government buildings after hundreds of mud houses were washed away.

Weather officials said the rains had been triggered by a low-pressure system over the Bay of Bengal.

- REUTERS