ASIA/MYANMAR - Thousands of victims because of heavy flooding

Yangon (Agenzia Fides) - The Burmese government has declared a state of calamity in the central and western regions of Myanmar's Chin, Rakáin, Magwe and Sagaing, the most severely affected by the floods that continue to cause victims. So far there have been more than 200,000 victims after two weeks of heavy rains. Several civil and military organizations, humanitarian organizations have pledged to reach the affected areas in order to bring water, food, blankets, medicine and other basic necessities. The catastrophe has destroyed 12 bridges in the district of Tamu, Sagaing department, where about 5300 people were evacuated into shelters.
In the village of Kale, northwest Sagaing, more than 7,000 victims have been registered, and 400 square kilometers of crops have been flooded and lost. The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that rising waters have caused severe damage to infrastructure and farmland in Sittwe, the state capital of Rakáin, where about 100,000 members of the persecuted rohinya Muslim minority have been living in refugee camps since the beginning of the wave of sectarian violence in 2012. In Magway, the neighboring populations in 70 villages in the district of Pwintbyu have been forced to seek shelter in schools and monasteries, while in Haka, Chin State, at least 100 homes have been destroyed by landslides. The volume of water outflow of the Irrawaddy River, which crosses the Country from north to south, has reached a critical level in the village of Pyay, where authorities have alerted all the residents of the areas at risk to move to reception centers. The city of Pdaung, 10 kilometers south, is completely flooded. Almost every year, the monsoon rains, which fall between June and October, cause flooding in the Country. In May 2008, the typhoon Nargis caused 138,000 dead, 800,000 homeless and 2 and a half million victims. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 05/08/2015)