At least 1,200 people have been killed and millions have been left homeless following devastating floods that have hit India, Bangladesh and Nepal, in one of the worst flooding disasters to have affected the region in years.
International aid agencies said thousands of villages have been cut off by flooding with people being deprived of food and clean water for days.
South Asia suffers from frequent flooding during the monsoon season, which lasts from June to September, but authorities have said this year's floods have been much worse.
In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, the death toll has risen to more than 500, the Straits Times reported, quoting disaster management officials.
The paper said the ongoing floods had so far affected 17 mllion people in India, with thousands sheltered in relief camps.
Anirudh Kumar, a disaster management official in Patna, the capital of Bihar, a poor state known for its mass migration from rural areas to cities, said this year's farming had collapsed because of the floods, which will lead to a further rise in unemployment in the region.
In the northern state of Uttar Pradresh, reports said more than 100 people had died and 2.5 million have been affected.
In Mumbai, authorities struggled to evacuate people living in the financial capital's low-lying areas as transport links were paralysed and downpours led to water rising up to five feet in some parts of the city.
Weather officials are forecasting heavy rains to continue over the next 24 hours and have urged people to stay indoors.
In neighbouring Bangladesh, at least 134 have died in monsoon flooding which is believed to have submerged at least a third of the country.
More than 600,000 hectares of farmland have been partially damaged and in excess of 10,000 hectares have been completely washed away, according to the disaster minister.
Bangladesh's economy is dependent on farming and the country lost around a million tonnes of rice in flash floods in April.
"Farmers are left with nothing, not event with clean drinking water," said Matthew Marek, the head of disaster response in Bangladesh for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent.
In Nepal, 150 people have been killed and 90,000 homes have been destroyed in what the UN has called the worst flooding incident in the country in a decade.
According to the Red Cross, at least 7.1 million people have been affected in Bangladesh - more than the population of Scotland - and around 1.4 million people have been affected in Nepal.
The disaster comes as headlines have focused on the floods in Houston, Texas, which authorities have described as "unprecedented".
Officials in Texas have said the death toll now stands at 15 in the wake of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey, with thousands forced to flee their homes.
The rise in extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods have been identified by climate scientists as the hallmark of man-made climate change.
The US has seen two of its worst storms ever, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina, in just over a decade.
India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has said climate change and new weather patterns are having "a big negative impact".
The majority of the northern hemisphere has the money and infrastructure to survive just about anything. I'm really glad I'm not in the third-world (for this and other reasons). ---
"message parlor" ? do you mean the post office ? - SlayerX888
(CNN)In rural areas across northern Bangladesh families are preparing to mark Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest dates on the Muslim calendar.
The holiday, which translates literally as the "sacrifice feast," is intended to be a time of great celebration. In small villages and towns, such as Beraberi some 134 kilometers northwest of Dhaka, residents spent much of the last year hand-rearing goats and cows in anticipation of the annual festivities.
Then the rains began to fall.
As the world's media trains its sights on the tragic events in Texas and Louisiana, another water-driven catastrophe is unfolding in villages like Beraberi throughout Bangladesh and parts of Nepal and India.
There, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) estimates that at least 1,200 have died and more than 41 million people have been affected by monsoon rains and severe flooding as of June this year. The rains are now moving northwest towards Pakistan, where more devastation is expected.
At its peak on August 11, the equivalent to almost a week's worth of average rainfall during the summer monsoon season was dumped across parts of Bangladesh in the space of a few hours, according to the country's Meteorological Department, forcing villagers in low-lying northern areas to grab what few possessions they could carry and flee their homes in search of higher ground.
And still the rains keep coming. In Bangladesh alone, floods have so far claimed the lives of 142 people, and impacted over 8.5 million.
In Beraberi, one of numerous island villages know as "chars" dotted along the Jamuna River, entire homes have been washed away, and crops and food supplies -- including livestock -- all but wiped out. When aid workers carrying relief parcels from the IFRC arrived by helicopter earlier this week, villagers described the rains as the "worst in living memory."
"People were fearful they would soon begin to starve," says Corinne Ambler, who was among the IFRC team who visited the village. "They are used to seasonal flooding but nothing to this degree, this is a different level -- for miles around all you can see is water, the flooding has transformed the countryside."
Mother of two, Adere Begum, 34, was at home in the village with her daughters when the flooding began. "The water was up to our knees inside. There were snakes in the water and my children were very scared," said Begum, who lost much of her livestock, including ducks, chickens and cows in the floods.
The IFRC has described the flooding in Bangladesh as the most serious in 40 years. The organization estimates that 700,000 homes have been partially or totally destroyed and up to a third of its terrain -- much of it farmland -- left submerged, raising fears of a coming food shortage, as the country grapples to deal with a shortfall in staple produce.
The majority of the northern hemisphere has the money and infrastructure to survive just about anything. I'm really glad I'm not in the third-world (for this and other reasons).
Partly because they live in areas where monsoons aren't common. ---
