Indian villagers pray as floods rise

RAJKHAND KATONJHA, India (AFP) - Hundreds of people fearfully chant a Hindu prayer to the dead as they cower on rooftops in this submerged Indian village, one of thousands hit by the worst monsoon rains in decades.

"Ram Nam Satya Hai (God's name is the truth)," repeat the hundreds of people crowded atop 30 brick-and-mortar buildings still standing in Rajkhand Katonja, one of more than 4,000 villages hit by floods in Bihar state.
"We're offering the prayer of the dead as we don't know what will happen to us," villager Sudhir Prasad said Saturday after the rain-swollen Bagmati River wiped out their mud-thatched homes.

Nearly 25 million people have been displaced by flooding and 1,400 killed in South Asia in the worst monsoon rains to lash the region in decades.
The monsoon, which lasts from June to September, regularly brings flooding to the subcontinent, but this year the region has suffered some of the worst in living memory.

Northern India, Bangladesh and Nepal are the worst affected, with many people falling victim to water-borne diseases.
Impoverished Bihar, India's second most populous state with 120 million people, is one of the hardest hit, with some 10.3 million people cut off by flood waters for more than 10 days. Some 69,000 homes have been submerged.

Rajkhand Katonjha flooded after torrential rains coupled with a massive outpouring from rain-hit Nepal caused the Bagmati River to burst its banks.
Water engulfed the village huts, forcing some 200 families onto the roofs, where young children lay listlessly in their own diarrhoea with no medical help.
"For generations, Bagmati had been our saviour and now it has turned into a killer," screamed Ganomotia Devi, as she fed shreds of clothing to a calf hauled onto to a rooftop. Dairy production is one of the area's mainstays.
"We don't know what has happened to our cattle," wept the 40-year-old. "It's better we die quickly."

Water-borne diseases were causing acute problems in all areas.
"There's no relief, no help, no food -- nothing -- except this brown water around us," said villager Prasad.
"The situation we have now is unprecedented in the past 30 years," A.K Chowdhury, Bihar chief secretary, told AFP in the state capital Patna.
Bihar's disaster management chief Manoj Srivastava said efforts to supply relief had been hindered by bad weather.
"We're facing huge problems distributing aid but the moment it subsides we will launch the (aid) programme on a war-footing," he promised.
"Now the situation is bad," he said as military helicopters flew from one flooded village to another, dropping wheat, molasses, powdered milk and plastic sheeting.

Another 5.5 million people have been displaced in eastern Assam state, while in northern Uttar Pradesh state 1.4 million people were affected.
Bangladesh, meanwhile, said the situation appeared to be worse than floods in 2004 that inundated 38 percent of the country, forcing millions to flee.
"In the last 15 days, all major rivers rose above danger levels and their water has already inundated some 40 per cent of the country's total land area," said Saiful Hossain of Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre.

Deaths from monsoon rains there topped 200 by Saturday, after at least 16 fatalities were reported overnight, according to the government.
This year, 7.5 million people have been either displaced or marooned as the floods washed away or damaged 89,000 mud-built or tin-roofed houses.
In Nepal, the home ministry said the toll from monsoon-triggered flooding and landslides stood at 91. Most of the deaths have occurred in the Terai plains region on Nepal's southern border with India.