DHAKA (Reuters) - More than 200 people have died in monsoon flooding in South Asia in the last 10 days while more than 10 million remained marooned in their villages or homeless on Friday, with many having no access to health care. The threat of water-borne diseases is rising, with many villages cut off for days. Some people have been bitten by snakes flooded out of their pits, others crushed under the rubble of their houses, and many drowned by rising flood waters.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said the floods were causing "havoc" and "chaos" in the region, with around 20 million affected and could be the worst in living memory in some areas.
The ferocity of this year's monsoon will add fuel to claims that global warming is already inducing extreme weather effects. Several other countries, including Indonesia, China and to a lesser extent Britain, have all experienced unusually devastating floods in the past month. On the subcontinent, experts have for some years associated the increasing severity of the annual monsoon with glacial melt in the Himalayas caused by rising temperatures.
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