Monsoon flood toll 2500

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33610, 12 August 1974, Page 13

Monsoon flood toll 2500

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) DACCA, August 11. The official death toll in the floods in Bangladesh has risen to 2000 today, and Indian authorities have disclosed that more than 500 people have died in the floods in north-eastern India that have left seven million homeless.

The Bangladesh Relief Minister (Mr Abdul Momin) said crop and property losses were estimated at about sl2Bom since the floods began two months ago. The Indian Air Force has been put on alert to parachute food, medicine, and inflatable rafts into the

flooded areas. The monsoon rains which have been incessant for more than two months are slackening. In the state of Bihar, between Calcutta and Nepal, there are four million homeless, according to the head of the state Government (Mr Abdul Ghafoor). In the state of Assam, which lies east of Bangladesh, more than one million people are homeless in the district of Goalpara. Officially the number of dead in Assam is 44, but unofficially the count is 100. The Bangladesh Air Force is dropping cooked food in isolated areas where people are even without the means to make fire.