Flash floods ravage India's northeast

An Indian boy guides a canoe past the bloated bodies of cattle lying in floodwaters near the village of Bolbola, some 130km west of Guwahati yesterday. Rescuers in India's flood-ravaged northeast have recovered a further 37 bodies, taking the death toll in flash floods and landslides in the region to 157 in the past five days. Thirty bodies were recovered from paddy fields and deserted houses in Assam's Goalpara district, the area worst affected by the floods. PHOTO: AFP

Thirty bodies were recovered from paddy fields and deserted houses in Assam's Goalpara district, the area worst affected by the floods, said a rescue official who did not wish to be named.

The bodies of seven others who had drowned in different incidents in adjoining Meghalaya state were recovered by the army, a government official told AFP by telephone from the state capital Shillong.

Thousands of people were still taking shelter on high-rise embankments and the edges of highways in Assam, witnesses said.

Weather officials said the deluge, the worst in a decade to soak the region outside of a monsoon period, was caused by a depression in the Bay of Bengal, but the skies were expected to clear soon.

Authorities fear the death toll could rise with reports of many more people missing from remote areas.

Scenes of death and devastation were in evidence everywhere in Goalpara's Bolbola village, 130km west of Assam's main city of Guwahati.

Vultures, crows and other birds of prey circled above drawn by the stench of decaying animal carcasses.

An AFP correspondent saw the bodies being piled up in Bolbola village by Indian soldiers called in for rescue operations.

"We were sleeping when flood waters surrounded us in a flash and before I could react I saw my son swept away," said a distraught Hamid Islam, a farmer from Bolbola.