Hundreds Dead And Missing In Flooding Across South East Asia

Search and rescue operations are ongoing across Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, with hundreds still missing
Hundreds are dead and missing in South East Asia, where some of the heaviest rain in decades has swept the region.
Monsoons exacerbated by tropical storms has caused some of the worst flooding in years, with millions affected in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
The death toll on Indonesia’s Sumatra island has passed 300 and there are fears this could increase further as dozens remain missing.
Evacuation efforts are still under way there, with major roads cut off, and internet and electricity only partially restored.
Officials said on Sunday that the death toll in Thailand had risen to 170. There were also several deaths reported in Malaysia.
Elsewhere, there have been nearly 160 deaths in Sri Lanka due to a bout of particularly extreme weather that has caused flooding and mudslides.
An exceptionally rare tropical storm, named Cyclone Senyar, caused catastrophic landslides and flooding in Indonesia, with homes swept away and thousands of buildings submerged.
“The current was very fast, in a matter of seconds it reached the streets, entered the houses,” a resident in Indonesia’s Aceh Province, Arini Amalia, told the BBC.
She and her grandmother raced to a relative’s house on higher terrain. On returning the following day to retrieve some belongings, she said the flood had completely swallowed the house: “It’s already sunk.”
After waters rapidly rose in West Sumatra and submerged his home, Meri Osman said he was “swept away by the current” and clung onto a clothesline until he was rescued.
“During the flood, everything was gone,” a resident of Bireuen in Sumatra’s Aceh province told news agency Reuters. “I wanted to save my clothes, but my house came down.”
The bad weather has hampered rescue operations, and while tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds are still stranded, the Indonesian disaster agency said.
In Tapanuli, the worst-affected area, residents have reportedly ransacked shops in search of food.
Pressure is mounting on Jakarta to declare a national disaster in Sumatra to enable a faster and more co-ordinated response.
In Indonesia, hundreds are still missing after heavy rains wreaked havoc on the island of Sumatra.
In Thailand’s southern Songkhla province, water rose 3m (10ft) and at least 145 people died in one of the worst floods in a decade.
Across the 10 provinces hit by flooding, more than 3.8 million people have been affected, the government said on Saturday.
The city of Hat Yai experienced 335mm of rainfall in a single day last week – the heaviest in 300 years. As waters receded, officials recorded a sharp rise in the death toll.
At one hospital in Hat Yai, workers were forced to move bodies to refrigerated trucks after the morgue became overwhelmed, news agency AFP reported.