Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Ramadan
Fatwa Audios
Month of Mercy
Women
Eed Al- Fitr
Food Recipes
Videos
At least 2.5 million people in India are marooned after heavy monsoon rains lashed their villages, a government minister said.
Indian emergency services are rushing supplies to the victims.
Akhilesh Prasad Singh, a junior agriculture minister, said on Wednesday one million tons of rice and wheat would be doled out after the Kosi river burst its banks and flooded huge swathes of the eastern state of Bihar.
Food riots erupted in eastern India, where about 250,000 houses have been destroyed in what officials say are the worst floods in 50 years.
One person was killed in Madhepura district when angry villagers fought among themselves over limited supplies of food and medicines at overcrowded relief centers.
The Kosi river in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, smashed through mud embankments and changed course last week, unleashing huge walls of water that inundated hundreds of villages and towns.
Some 10,000 of Madhepura's 45,000 residents fled soon after Kosi began shifting from its course on August 18.
Torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 725 people have lost their lives.
Other deaths were reported from Nepal and Bangladesh.
"A couple of days ago just a handful of districts were affected and today there are 15 which are under water," Mukesh Kumar told an AFP news agency correspondent in Madhepura, some 225km from the state capital Patna.
'Massive effort'
"We need a massive rescue effort," said local council member Kumar.
Stranded villagers waved at passing helicopters and sent text messages to local authorities from rooftops of flooded buildings.
"Time is running out for me and there is no relief in sight and I have not eaten for days," a message from flood victim Sanjeev Kumar read.
Among those hit was Shanti Devi, who dragged her two children out of their house as the waters rose.
"The government is asking us to escape but we have nowhere to go," the 32-year-old mother said.
Nitish Kumar, the Bihar chief minister, advised panic-stricken people to "run" in an overnight address on state-run radio.
"Time is running out for these luckless people," Narendra Narayan Yadav, the state revenue minister in Madehpura where the swirling water has overrun train tracks and the main highway, warned.
People were using rowboats or a few backroads still above the rising water levels to flee.
The force of the water was washing away about 150 meters of the Kosi's protective levee every day, Nitish Mishra, Bihar's disaster management minister, said.
PHOTO CAPTION
Commuters wade through flood water in Hyderabad, India, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008.
Al-Jazeera
Prayer Times
Prayer times for Doha, Qatar 
