Floods maroon 1m in West Bengal

Rescue workers struggled to deliver food and water to the people living in villages cut off by floods after six days of rains in West Bengal state, officials said.

Rescue workers ferried boatloads of rice and sugar to coastal villagers but many people remained without supplies and faced hunger and dehydration, West Bengal Relief Minister Hafiz Ali Sairani told reporters.

"More than half of the two million people in four coastal districts affected by the flooding still remain marooned in the submerged villages of East Midnapore district and the Sundarbans off the Bay of Bengal," Sairani said.

Relief workers were using boats to ferry supplies of puffed rice and molasses to hundreds of villages cut off by the floods.

"The flooding has left more than a million people stranded in the state's south. We are reaching relief materials to them," West Bengal village development minister Surya Kanta Mishra said.

At least two rivers in southern Sunderbans region had breached their banks, flooding 60 villages, officials said, and large areas of the paddy-growing state were submerged by muddy flood waters.

He said at least 14 people had died in the floods.

"Relief could not reach many villages as roads were washed away," Sairani said.

The unseasonal rains following the July-September monsoon caught many by surprise and officials said it was difficult to transport food and clean water to the hardest-hit areas.

The rains, brought on by a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal, halted Monday, said regional meteorological office official G.C. Deb.