Hundreds dead and missing in floods in Southeast Asia

Hundreds of people are dead and missing in Southeast Asia, where some of the heaviest rains in decades have hit the region.

The monsoons, exacerbated by tropical storms, have caused some of the worst flooding in years, with millions affected in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The death toll on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has surpassed 300 and there are fears it could rise further as dozens of people remain missing.

Evacuation efforts are still underway there, with main roads closed and internet connectivity and electricity only partially restored.

Authorities said on Sunday that the death toll in Thailand had risen to 170. Several deaths were also reported in Malaysia.

Elsewhere, there have been almost 160 deaths in Sri Lanka due to a particularly extreme weather episode that has caused flooding and landslides.

An exceptionally rare tropical storm, called 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,” Arini Amalia, a resident of the Indonesian province of Aceh, told the BBC.

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

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

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

Bad weather has hampered rescue operations and although tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds remain stranded, Indonesia’s disaster agency said.

In Tapanuli, the worst affected area, residents reportedly looted shops in search of food.

Pressure is mounting on Jakarta to declare a national disaster in Sumatra to allow for a faster and more coordinated response.

In Thailand’s southern Songkhla province, water rose 3 meters (10 feet) and at least 145 people died in one of the worst floods in a decade.

In the 10 flood-affected provinces, more than 3.8 million people have been affected, the government said on Saturday.

The city of Hat Yai experienced 335 mm of rain in a single day last week, the heaviest in 300 years. As the waters receded, authorities recorded a sharp rise in the death toll.

At a hospital in Hat Yai, workers were forced to transfer bodies to refrigerated trucks after the morgue became overcrowded, the AFP news agency reported.

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

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

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

The floods have wreaked havoc and left parts of northern Perlis state under water, with two dead and tens of thousands of people forced to take shelter.

Elsewhere in Asia, Sri Lanka has been hit by Cyclone Ditwah, with at least 193 dead and more than 200 missing, according to the Disaster Management Centre.

Sri Lanka is also dealing with one of the worst climate disasters in recent years and the government has declared a state of emergency.

More than 15,000 homes have been destroyed and some 78,000 people have been forced to stay in temporary shelters, officials said. They added that around a third of the country was without electricity or running water.

Meteorologists have said the extreme weather in Southeast Asia may have been caused by the interaction of Typhoon Koto, which crossed 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 effects of the approaching Typhoon Koto, reports the AFP news agency.

The region’s annual monsoon season, typically between June and September, typically brings heavy rain.

While 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 rain, flash flooding and stronger winds.