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India flashfloods kill one, displace 400,000

* Five villages washed away by rain-swollen Brahmaputra river in Assam

ASSAM: One person died and 400,000 have been displaced in a northeastern Indian state where a rain-swollen river burst its banks four days ago swamping hundreds of villages, an official said on Sunday.

“One tribal villager drowned and thousands have been rendered homeless in the flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rain,” Assam State Minister for Rehabilitation Bhumidar Barman told AFP. The official said that around 50,000 more people were still marooned in some of the worst-hit districts, adding paramilitary forces would soon bring them to safety.

Those who had already been rescued have been housed in schools and hundreds of other temporary shelters. “We are providing food and medical support to the flood-hit people,” Barman said.

Villages: The AP news agency said the overflowing river washed away five villages in the state, forcing nearly 4,000 residents to flee to makeshift relief camps.

As water and large chunks of mud flowed into the villages in Nagaon district on Saturday, residents abandoned their homes and moved to higher ground along the banks of the Brahmaputra, AP quoted Barman as saying.

Authorities put them in makeshift relief camps and gave them rice, lentils and water purifying tablets, the minister said. The area is nearly 80 miles east of Gauhati, the capital of Assam.

The monsoon rains usually hit India from June to September. Last week, the Brahmaputra breached a 328-foot (100-meter) stretch of a newly built embankment in Assam’s Lakhimpur district. At least 300 villages in the district, about 217 miles north of Gauhati, have been flooded after the breach. agencies

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