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Heavy flooding in Myanmar leaves dozens dead

It added that no less than 27 individuals had died resulting from flooding final month, and that the numbers have been more likely to rise.

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More than 400,000 acres of farmland have been inundated and over 30,000 destroyed, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Immigration, while rail lines, roads and bridges have been cut off.

“Floods have swept away all we had, our house, belongings, and cattle”, Muhammad Azam, 55, told ucanews.com.

“More than 150 Chinese will be released in the amnesty”, he said without giving further details.

He said even survivors suffering from health problems have been left stranded since mid-July, because links to the main roads have been submerged with floodwater. The announcement did not specify what practical measures would be taken, but said the action would help restore badly affected areas.

“Many families are still without a shelter”, said Amjad Gulzar, Caritas Pakistan’s executive director.

Flooding in Kalay in Burma’s Sagaing region, which has been declared a disaster zone. “Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, head of the Catholic Church, has also contacted us and expressed his concern for those affected”.

Tens of thousands of people have been forced from their homes in Myanmar, amid deadly monsoon rains.

Conditions worsened considerably after Cyclone Komen brought strong winds and heavy rains when it made landfall earlier this week.

Rescue workers have been mobilized across the country but the sheer extent of the flooding is testing the government’s limited capacity to cope with disasters, officials admit.

The United Nations 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.

Myanmar’s president has visited one of the worst-hit areas of the flood-stricken country, saying that water levels are slowly receding and that he hopes people can soon return to their homes.

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In Rakhine, the second poorest state in the impoverished country after Chin, the situation is likely to be particularly dire for some 140,000 persecuted Rohingya Muslims who are in displacement camps following communal violence in 2012. “Some people are now sheltering at schools in Thechaung and Bumay villages”, he told AFP, withholding his name. Heavy rains caused flooding over 20,000 acres of rice field and in about a hundred villages.

Vehicles make their way through a flooded road in Bago 80 kilometers northeast of Yangon Myanmar