Hundreds dead and missing in flooding across South East Asia

Hundreds of people have been killed and missing in Southeast Asia, where the heaviest rain in decades has hit the region.

Enhanced monsoon rains triggered by tropical storms have led to the worst floods in years, affecting millions of people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The death toll on Indonesia’s Sumatra island has exceeded 300 and is feared to rise further as dozens of people remain missing.

Evacuation efforts are still ongoing there, with major roads cut off, and internet and electricity only partially restored.

The death toll in Thailand has risen to 170, officials said on Sunday. There are reports of deaths of many people in Malaysia also.

Elsewhere in Sri Lanka, floods and landslides caused by particularly extreme weather have caused about 160 deaths.

An exceptionally rare tropical storm named Cyclone Senyar caused devastating landslides and floods in Indonesia, sweeping away homes and inundating thousands of buildings.

“The current was very strong, within seconds it reached the streets, entered houses,” Arini Amalia, a resident of Indonesia’s Aceh province, told the BBC.

She and her grandmother ran to a relative’s house in a higher area. Returning the next day to collect some belongings, he said that the flood had completely swallowed the house: “It is already submerged.”

After waters rose rapidly and submerged her home in West Sumatra, Meri Osman said she was “swept away by the current” and clung to a clothesline until she was rescued.

“During the flood, everything was destroyed,” a resident of Biruen, in Sumatra’s Aceh province, told news agency Reuters. “I wanted to save my clothes, but my house collapsed.”

The Indonesian disaster agency said rescue operations were being hampered by bad weather and that thousands of people had been evacuated, with hundreds still trapped.

In Tapanuli, the worst-hit area, residents have reportedly vandalized shops in search of food.

There is increasing pressure on Jakarta to declare a national disaster in Sumatra to enable a faster and more coordinated response.

Water rose 3 meters (10 feet) in Thailand’s southern Songkhla province and killed at least 145 people in the worst flooding in a decade.

The government said on Saturday that more than 38 lakh people have been affected by the floods in 10 provinces.

The city of Hat Yai received 335 mm of rain in a single day last week – the heaviest in 300 years. As the waters receded, officials reported a sharp increase in the death toll.

At a hospital in Hat Yai, staff were forced to move bodies in refrigerated trucks after the morgue was flooded, news agency AFP reported.

“We were stuck in the water for seven days and no agency came to help,” Hat Yai resident Thanita Khiawom told BBC Thai.

The government has promised relief measures, including compensation of up to two million baht ($62,000) for families who lost family members.

In neighboring Malaysia, the death toll is much lower, but the damage is just as devastating.

Floods have wreaked havoc and left parts of northern Perlis state under water, killing two people and forcing thousands into shelters.

Elsewhere in Asia, Sri Lanka has been hit by Cyclone Ditvaha, with at least 193 people killed and more than 200 missing, according to the Center for Disaster Management.

Sri Lanka is also battling one of the worst weather disasters in recent years, and the government has declared a state of emergency.

Officials said more than 15,000 homes were destroyed and about 78,000 people were forced to live in temporary shelters. He said that about a third of the country was without electricity or running water.

Meteorologists have said the extreme weather in Southeast Asia may be caused by the interaction of Typhoon Koto – which has passed the Philippines and is now heading towards Vietnam – and the rare formation of Cyclone Senyar in the Strait of Malacca.

Three people have already died and another is missing in Vietnam due to the impact of the incoming Typhoon Koto, news agency AFP reports.

The region’s annual monsoon season, usually between June and September, often brings heavy rains.

Although it is difficult to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, scientists say it is making storms more frequent and intense, resulting in heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger winds.