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CHANDPUR BHANGAHA, India: Efforts to rescue tens of thousands of villagers in northern India still cut off by a monsoon-swollen river have entered a critical stage, aid workers and evacuees say.
Those who have managed to escape the worst-hit areas of India's Bihar state say food is running out and people are having to drink the muddy flood water, while aid workers speak of "grim" conditions.
"We haven't had anything to eat for five days," said Murti Shah, who finally got out of her village in worst-hit Madhepura district after spending two weeks on the school's rooftop eating through the supplies of grain the family had stored.
"We drank the flood waters."
Asked if she had boiled the water first, she looked amazed.
"How would we boil it?" she asked. "We have no utensils. We have nothing. Everything is under water."
Many villagers in the area, submerged after the Kosi river breached its defences in Nepal and swung east, have lost their lives trying to make it to safety.
"My uncle was on a tree and when he tried to get down he was washed away by the current," said 30-year-old Anil Kumar Bhaskar, who also made it out Wednesday on a navy boat. "Later we found his body in the reeds."
State government warnings to villagers to evacuate when the river first broke through its flood walls have kept the death toll low, with some 100 people drowned so far even though the floods have affected three million.
Over 600,000 people have been evacuated from the flooded areas, but rescuing the estimated 350,000 villagers still stranded within the next several days is vital to prevent more deaths, rescuers and survivors say.
"We are getting to areas we haven't been able to get to before," said Rajeev Ahluwalia, an assistant commander with India's new National Disaster Response Force set up after the 2004 tsunami, in Chandpur Bhangaha.
"It's very grim. The people there are in pathetic conditions," he said as he set off on a final rescue late Wednesday afternoon.
Although the Indian government is working overtime, deploying rescue squads from its army, navy and disaster response force, villagers and aid agencies say it is just not fast enough.
"I think the magnitude has been greater than what the government has been able to handle," said Aditi Kapur, a spokeswoman for the British aid group Oxfam.
"The state and aid agencies need to continue rescue operations. More needs to be done."
Several of the villagers who arrived by boat Wednesday said these were the first rescue vessels they had seen since their homes were flooded.
Others on an embankment in Chandpur Bhangaha district - one of the worst-hit areas in the east of Bihar state - said they had walked here to plead for rescue teams to be sent to their villages.
"No boats have come to my village," said Jawahar Yadav, a man of around 60 who had come from Pakhilpad village, where he says hundreds are waiting.
"All our drinking water taps have drowned. I walked through the water to ask for help."
- AFP/yb
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