Rescuers struggled Thursday to evacuate the last 300,000 villagers still stranded in flood-ravaged northern India while delivering food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people already living in relief camps. Towns and villages home to about 1.2 million people have been flooded for more than two weeks after monsoon rains caused the Kosi River in neighboring Nepal to burst its banks and turn hundreds of square miles (hundreds of square meters) of India's impoverished Bihar state into a giant lake, said Prataya Amrit, a top state disaster management official. Authorities have already evacuated about 680,000 people from more than 800 villages in the past 10 days with the help of 3,500 soldiers and 500 navy personnel, Amrit said. More than one-third are living in government-run relief camps while many of the rest are staying with friends and relatives. “We are in critical areas and hope to complete the evacuation of the remaining 300,000 people by this weekend,” Amrit said, adding that 11 air force helicopters have dropped 70,000 food packets to the stranded villagers. Authorities also rushed 900 doctors and set up 125 makeshift health centers in the worst-hit districts of Araria, Saharasa, Madhepura, Purnea and Supaul amid fears that crowded and unsanitary conditions could lead to outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhea and cholera, he said. Authorities have distributed more than 54,000 bottles and pouches of drinking water and 450,000 chlorine tablets to purify water, he said.
