Floods, landslides in India's Tripura displace tens of thousands

By Tora Agarwala, Ruma Paul

GUWAHATI/DHAKA (Reuters) -Soldiers in lifeboats ferried people to safety in India's northeastern state of Tripura on Friday after heavy rain triggered floods and landslides, forcing more than 65,000 people from their homes and killing 23, authorities said.

Television images showed army personnel manning the rescue craft, while cars and buses were marooned in streets of knee-deep water, and disaster management officials said four days of incessant rain had swelled rivers.

"As of this morning, most rivers are flowing below the critical mark," said one of them, Suman Deb, although the intensity of the rain had reduced since Thursday night. 

"However, the river Gomti still continues to flow above the danger mark," Deb said, referring to the state's main river, which flows through the district of Comilla in neighbouring Bangladesh to empty into the Bay of Bengal. 

The displaced have gathered in 450 camps, the officials said, with a total of about 1.7 million affected, along with extensive damage to infrastructure, crops and livestock.

Most deaths were caused by landslides, though some followed the collapse of mud walls and drowning, another disaster management official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The Indian Army said more than 80 of its personnel joined in rescue efforts, bringing to safety 334 people stranded by rising floodwaters.

In Bangladesh, the Gomti broke through an embankment late on Thursday, inundating at least 15 villages and displacing hundreds of families, officials and witnesses said.

In the capital, Dhaka, some people alleged this week that the floods were caused by the opening of Dumbur dam sluice gates on the Gomti in India's Tripura, an assertion New Delhi has rejected as incorrect.

The death toll from the flooding rose to 13 in Bangladesh, with over three million people stranded, according to the disaster management ministry. 

Several villages, fish farming enclosures, and crop fields in the coastal Khulna district were inundated after high tides caused river embankments to collapse, officials said, adding that blocked roads in several districts isolated people and hampered rescue and relief efforts.

More than 75,000 people were taken to more than 1,500 shelters in the flood-hit districts, with military and border guards helping in the rescue, authorities said.

Floodwater gushed through the districts of Feni, Moulvibazar and Noakhali where roads were inundated and ropes used to pull stranded people to safety, television videos showed.

"I have never seen such a flood in my lifetime," said Noakhali resident Mohammad Alam.

(Additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi; Writing by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, William Maclean)