NEW DELHI — India's Home Ministry said Sunday that heavy monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people in the past week and forced tens of thousands of people to take shelter in state-run relief camps.
It said a cyclone struck the worst-hit state of West Bengal, where 48 people have been killed and nearly 215,000 villagers have been taken to relief camps after heavy rains triggered flooding. Another 28 deaths were reported from western Rajasthan state, the ministry said.
On Saturday, at least 20 people were swept away by a landslide that flattened up to 10 homes in a tiny village in the northeastern Manipur state, a spokesman for the National Disaster Response Force said Sunday.
In Myanmar on Sunday, President Thein Sein visited one of the worst-hit areas of his flood-stricken country, saying that water levels are slowly receding and that he hopes people can soon return to their homes.
He spoke from Kalay, a town in northwestern Myanmar, where two weeks of rain has caused severe flooding, cutting off the area from land transport. He told state TV that the government plans to begin reconstruction once evacuated people return to their homes.
The TV report also showed flood victims gathered at a Buddhist monastery, where they were handed aid items.
A report issued Saturday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Myanmar disaster officials estimated that more than 156,000 people had been affected by flooding. It added that at least 27 people had died due to flooding last month, and that the numbers were likely to rise.
The UN report said there was a shortage of information from the coastal state of Rakhine, which was hit by a fierce tropical storm at the end of last week.
''The UN and international humanitarian organizations have offered their support and are already working closely with the Myanmar authorities at local, State, and Union levels to assess urgent needs and are providing support to the humanitarian response,'' said a statement issued by Eamonn Murphy, the UN's resident and humanitarian cordinator in Myanmar.