Helicopters Drop Food for 2 Million Indians Stranded by Floods

elicopters dropped food to almost 2 million marooned Indian villagers as the death toll from unusually heavy monsoon rains and floods in South Asia rose to more than 225.

     The food drops on Saturday to 2,200 villages cut off by flooding aimed to help desperate residents in the worst-hit eastern parts of India's Uttar Pradesh state. Umesh Sinha, the state relief commissioner, also said nearly 280,000 acres (113,000 hectares) of rice paddy crops had been destroyed.

     In India's northeastern Assam state, flooding forced rhinos from their habitat at the Kaziranga National Park and their panicked charges killed one person and injured two others, wildlife officials said.

     At least 229 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh, and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days. The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent, a deluge that scatters floods and landslides across the region and kills hundreds of people every year.

     The number of dead in Bangladesh rose to 81 Saturday, up from 65 a day earlier, the country's information ministry said. Raging floodwaters have battered 38 out of 64 districts in the delta nation of 145 million people.

     Fakhruddin Ahmed, head of Bangladesh's military-backed interim government, visited the northwestern district of Sirajganj on Saturday. Despite the devastation, he said the government had enough food and medicine to distribute and foreign assistance wasn't yet needed.

     One person looking for that help was 45-year-old Aleya Begum, who took shelter on an embankment with more than 50 other families after their homes washed away in Pabna, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the capital, Dhaka.

     She said the group was short of drinking water.

     ``I've lost everything. We need help from the government to survive,'' Begum said.

     Low-lying areas around Dhaka were under neck-deep water, and many residents were using boats to travel around. Government meteorologists said water levels in Dhaka continued to rise.

     Flooded rivers started to recede Saturday in the Indian state of Assam _ but there was no such respite in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states.

     Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh's top elected official, said India and neighboring Nepal had signed a treaty in 1996 to solve the annual flooding by building dams and hydropower projects, but the projects have not yet begun.

     In Uttar Pradesh, flooding deaths came in all shapes and sizes: Two villagers were killed when a house collapsed, two children were swept away by floodwaters, and one person was killed by a snake bite.

     So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced by flooding, according to government figures.

     ___

     Associated Press reporters Julhas Alam and Farid Hossain in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Wasbir Hussain in Gauhati contributed to this report.